Due to a voter suppression law that was passedBy Republicans in Georgia last year, the rate of voters in the state who didn’t vote after having mail-in ballot applications rejected increased 45-fold, according to a new analysis by Mother Jones.
During Georgia’s municipal elections in 2021, mail-in ballot applications were rejected at a rate that was four times higherThis was a record for 2020 elections. Officials rejected 4 percent of absentee ballots, a record.
Mother Jones analyzed how many voters didn’t go on to cast a ballot in person due to their mail-in applications being denied, a rate that also increased dramatically last year. Only 25% of the 1,038 applicants who were denied in 2021 actually cast a ballot in person. That’s about 2.19 percent of total mail-in voters – a huge increase over the 0.05 percent of voters who didn’t end up voting after an application rejection in 2020.
As Mother Jones’s Ryan Little and Ari Berman wrote, the figure is “an example of how a seemingly minor change to voter access can lead to a big increase in disenfranchisement.”
The voter suppression law that Republicans have adopted Last spring, they rushed to get through the legislatureThe new law contains restrictions on absentee voter participation. The new law implemented stricterID requirements for mail in ballots reduced the time voters can submit mail-in requests by more than half, and decreased the number drop boxes. It is now illegal for election officials or anyone else to mail unrequested mail-in ballot requests.
Reporting has shown that voter disenfranchisement directly stemmed from these changes. One in six mail-in ballots was rejected because voters had incorrectly filled out their identification information after the new ID requirements.
If the same rate of rejections as last year were applied to the 2020 election then over 38,000 people would have not voted in this presidential election. This is over three times the margin of President Joe Biden’s win in Georgia; Biden won the state by only 11,000 votes.
Mail-in ballot restrictions will be more detrimental to Democrats. Last year, 404 Democrats saw their applications for 2020 primaries rejected. Only 145 Republicans were notified. 351 Democrats also had their mail-in ballots denied, while only 102 Republicans were affected.
It’s unclear why there is a disparity between how Democrats and Republicans are affected by the new changes.
However, election experts warned last year that the Republicans’ voter suppression laws were racist. One reason for the disproportionate effects of the law, then, could be that the restrictions disproportionately affect Black voters; 58 percent of registered voters who don’t have an ID on file with the state are Black, Little and Berman pointed out. Exit polls indicate that Black voters are the majority in the state. overwhelmingly choseBiden in 2020’s election. Mail-in voting was also a popular option for black voters, which is higher than any other demographic.
Another reason could be the fact that Democrats vote by mail. a higher proportionIn 2020, more than Republicans. In some states, the majority of mail-in ballots voted for Biden even though they were in states that eventually went for Donald Trump. In Georgia, however, Republicans won by a narrow margin over Democrats in mail ballots.
Other states have also been cracking down on mail in votes. This has led to similar results. In Texas, Republicans’ voter suppression law led to a 700 percent increase of rejected mail-in ballot applications in Houston’s Harris County, which went for Biden2020
