HEARD IT THROUGH THE GRAPEVINE

By Ryan O’Connell

Edited by Marilyn Go, Jim Harbison, and Jacki Swearingen

With its robust economy, Georgia has grown rapidly, attracting a large influx of new residents from other states. These waves of in-migration have profoundly changed the state’s political make-up over the last two decades because most of the newcomers are African American.  Many of them hold college degrees and are affluent; the largest group has moved from New York State.  Georgia’s Latino and Asian-American communities, while smaller, have also grown significantly. 

All three groups lean heavily Democratic, and their growth has turned Georgia from deep red into a battleground state. The number of eligible voters in Georgia has jumped 30% over the last 20 years, and Black Americans represent half of that increase. Meanwhile, whites constitute only about a quarter of new voters. 

Latinos and Asian Americans represent a relatively small slice of the Georgia electorate. However, their numbers have increased significantly; they account for 14% and 8%, respectively, of the growth in the voters since 2010. Hispanic voters increased by 235% and Asians by 245%, compared to 59% for Blacks and 12% for whites. (Black Latino and Asian Americans have been key to Georgia's registered voter growth since 2016). 

Source: Pew Research 

These shifts have radically altered the state’s demographic and political mix. In 2000, white voters overwhelmingly dominated the electorate, representing almost 70% of potential voters.  However, over the next 20 years, white voters’ share dropped by 11 points to 58%. Black Americans’ share rose five points, to 33% of all eligible voters. Hispanics and Asian Americans’ shares increased more modestly, to 5% and 3% of eligible voters, respectively.  

In total, the three minority groups rose to over 40% from about 30% of eligible voters over those ten years.  While white voters grew modestly, to 4.4 million from 4 million, minority voters shot up to 3 million from 1.7 million. This trend has created the potential for a significant shift in the balance of power between whites and minorities in Georgia.    

Source: Pew Research 

Voters in the metropolitan Atlanta region, which is mostly Democratic, now represent 54% of the state’s voters. Other metropolitan areas such as Savannah, Macon, and Augusta also lean Democratic.  

In 2018, Stacey Abrams, a Black woman, came very close to winning the race for governor.  Then, in 2020, a political earthquake shook Georgia, as a Democratic Presidential candidate won the state for the first time since Bill Clinton carried it in 1992.  Georgians also elected two Democrats as Senators, one of whom, Raphael Warnock, is African American.  

A History of Gerrymandering and Voter Suppression 

On the surface, Georgia, a state with a long history of voter suppression, seemed to embrace multiracial democracy at last.  But the reality is far different; old habits die hard. 

Georgia is a highly gerrymandered state, and state officials continue to use numerous techniques to diminish the power of minority voters. The state is probably balanced between Democratic and Republican voters at this point. Nonetheless, Republicans hold about 60% of state Senate seats and state House seats. Georgia’s Congressional delegation is also lopsided, with nine Republican-controlled districts and only five Democratic-controlled ones.   

Federal Judge Ordered Georgia to Redraw Maps 

In October 2023, a federal district judge in Atlanta ruled that Georgia’s electoral maps violated the Voting Rights Act of 1965 by diluting the power of Black voters. Judge Steve C. Jones of the Northern District of Georgia ordered the state legislature to redraw the maps for state and Congressional districts. The legislature did so at a special session beginning November 29, and Governor Brian Kemp signed new electoral maps into law on December 8.  

The new maps created an additional majority Black congressional district, as the judge ordered.  However, Democrats and Black voters who had brought this case (as well as two other lawsuits challenging State Senate and House maps) objected to the new maps. They criticized the congressional maps for shifting Lucy McBath, a Democratic congresswoman, into a mostly Republican district. Nonetheless, Judge Jones ruled that the redrawn maps complied with the Voting Rights Act and his previous order that an additional majority Black district be created (Georgia Republicans Add Majority-Black Congressional District at Expense of McBath).  

Judge Jones observed that “redistricting decisions by a legislative body with an eye toward securing partisan advantage do not alone ’violate’ the Voting Rights Act.” On this issue, Judge Jones cited the Supreme Court’s ruling in Rucho v. Common Cause (2019) that disputes  involving possible partisan gerrymandering (as opposed to racially based gerrymandering) are not within the purview of Federal courts.  

Under the revised maps, Republicans are likely to maintain their 9-5 majority in Georgia’s congressional delegation.

African Americans are severely under-represented in government on the county level. The deck is stacked against them because of electoral practices and the legislature’s “unprecedented efforts to intervene in local redistricting,” according to the Brennan Center for Law and Justice at New York University (Local Lockout in Georgia).    

Large Voter Purges 

While Brian Kemp was Secretary of State and preparing to run for Governor, he purged 1.4 million citizens from Georgia’s voter rolls over the course of eight years.  In 2017 alone, Kemp knocked 750,000 people off the rolls, knowing that Stacey Abrams would run against him for Governor in 2018.  

Some of the purges may have been routine, but many of those eliminated were Black voters. The purges may have been an important factor in the gubernatorial race, which Abrams lost by only 55,000 votes.   

New Voting Law Targets Minorities, City Dwellers

The 2020 election triggered a strong counter-reaction in Georgia. In March 2021, the Republican-dominated state legislature rushed through a bill in record time that was designed to suppress the votes of minorities and urban Democrats. The Republicans called the bill, SB 202, an “election integrity law”, even though state audits determined there was virtually no fraud in the 2020 election.  

The new law made registering to vote and voting more difficult for minorities and city-dwellers by:    

• Imposing tougher voter ID requirements 

• Restricting the availability of mail-in ballots and shortening the deadlines for submitting them

• Reducing the number of drop-off boxes for mail-in ballots in Atlanta and other cities

• Cutting back the hours for using drop-off boxes 

• Prohibiting the use of mobile voting buses 

• Allowing private citizens to file an unlimited number of challenges to voters’ registrations 

• Banning anyone except poll workers from handing out water and food to voters standing in line

Why the last prohibition? Voters in Atlanta, especially in mostly Black neighborhoods, often must wait for hours in the blazing Georgia heat to cast their votes.  The legislature clearly intended to discourage these minority citizens from casting their votes. 

Before the 2020 election, Georgia’s Secretary of State supervised most aspects of elections, including tabulating votes and resolving disputes about voting.  Secretary Brad Raffensberger, a Republican, discharged his duties honorably and refused Donald Trump’s request that he “find 11,720 votes” to swing the election in Trump’s favor.  

However, In SB 202, the legislature drastically cut back the Secretary’s authority over elections and created opportunities for other elected officials to intervene in election disputes. The Secretary of State is no longer the head of the State Election Commission.  Instead, Georgia legislators appoint the chair of the commission.  These changes could allow interference by partisan actors in contested elections.   

Frivolous Challenges to Voters’ Registrations 

Activists have abused their new power to challenge voter registrations under SB 202.  A handful of conservative activists--six--filed a total of 100,000 challenges in 2022, according to ProPublica (Close to 100,000 Voter Registrations Were Challenged in Georgia). Many of the challenges were frivolous and poorly researched.  

These challenges have been used to harass and intimidate voters.  And election officials have complained that they must spend a great deal of time reviewing the challenges, which often contain factual errors or focus on minor deficiencies.  

What Can You Do?  

Even if you don’t live in Georgia, you can help  make Georgia’s elections fairer, despite the obstacles created by the legislatures.  Helping Georgians to register to vote and monitoring polls are two particularly important ways to help.    

The Georgia primaries for Presidential candidates will be held on March 12. The primaries for state and Congressional races will take place on May 21. Early voting for those races will begin on April 29 and last until May 17.   

You can volunteer to monitor polls, monitor social media, and contact voters who need information and support.  You can fill the last two roles on a remote basis.  Get in touch with Common Cause Georgia (https://www.commoncause.org/georgia; 404-524-4598).  

If you are a lawyer or a paralegal, you can volunteer for Election Protection (https://866ourvote.org/volunteer), which provides advice to citizens who want to register to vote or who may encounter problems when they try to vote.  If you have a relative in law school, ask him or her to volunteer.  You can work from your office or home. EP provides training and materials on each state’s election laws and procedures.  

If you are not a lawyer, you can also volunteer to serve as a poll monitor with EP.  

Election Protection operates under the auspices of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a civil rights organization, and it has about 100 partners, including Common Cause.  

The Brennan Center has outlined several steps that Georgia and other swing states should take to ensure that their 2024 elections are conducted fairly and smoothly (Are Swing States Ready for 2024?).

Written by Jim Harbison; edited by Marilyn Go, Ryan O’Connell and Jacki Swearingen 

In our recent articles, we have focused on voting rights issues in the battleground states that may be key to the outcome of the 2024 Presidential Election.  We have covered developments, some of them adverse, in Georgia, Ohio, North Carolina, and Virginia. This month we turn to Pennsylvania, where the outlook for fair elections is more promising. 

Courts have often played an important role in the protection of voting rights and fair elections.  As a result, judicial elections have become significant contests in the struggle over voting rights. In the November 2022 elections, when Dan McCaffery won his race to become a Pennsylvania State Supreme Court Justice, the Court swung to a 5-2 Democratic majority. Had the Republican candidate won, the Democratic majority would have remained 4-3.  Given the stakes, out-of-state political groups funneled large amounts of money into the race. 

Election-reform advocates hailed McCaffery’s election as an important defense against potential gerrymandering and limitations of voters’ rights in the state.  To understand why, we need to review some of the history of gerrymandering in Pennsylvania, a state that is split nearly 50-50 between Republicans and Democrats.  The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has blocked repeated efforts to create highly gerrymandered electoral districts. 

In the 2010 elections, a small group within the Republican Party launched Project REDMAP (short for Redistricting Majority Project), a targeted effort to fund key state election races across the country and gain control of state legislatures.  Their data-driven, computerized approach succeeded, and it shifted the balance of power in numerous state governments, including Pennsylvania. 

The Republicans won the Pennsylvania state House (previously Democratic-controlled) and the governorship, while retaining their majority in the state Senate.  With this “trifecta” control, the Legislature drew redistricting maps in 2011 following the 2010 census that were extremely favorable to Republicans.  One of the districts drawn was called one of the most gerrymandered districts in the country and was characterized as Goofy kicking Donald Duck.  https://www.cbsnews.com/news/drawing-the-lines-on-gerrymandering/.  The Republican governor, unsurprisingly, did not veto the maps.

The maps were used until a lawsuit was filed claiming the maps were gerrymandered.  The case reached the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in late 2017.  On January 22, 2018, the Court held that the maps drawn “clearly, plainly and palpably violate the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania” as partisan gerrymandering.  The Court ordered that new maps be submitted to it by February 15, 2018.  In a 138-page order issued on February 7, 2018, the Supreme Court provided detailed criteria for the Legislature to use in redrawing maps.  

Despite the Court’s directions, the Legislature failed to draw fairer maps in a timely fashion.  The Court then selected an outside expert to create more balanced maps, which were implemented.  In the 2018 general election, the number of Republicans and Democrats in the state’s Congressional delegation, which had been a lopsided 13-5 in the last three general elections, swung to an even 9-9.  The new, balanced delegation was much more in line with the even split among Pennsylvanian voters.

Dissatisfied with the State Supreme Court rulings, Republican lawmakers then attempted to change the system for electing justices.  Previously, candidates ran on a statewide basis. However, the legislators sought to have judges elected from specific voting districts, even though justices on the Supreme Court have the duty to interpret the law for the entire state and do not represent a particular district’s constituents. Observers noted that some of the proposed districts were heavily Republican and suggested the intent was to change the Court’s composition.

Such a change is only possible by amending the PA State Constitution, which would require making it a state ballot initiative.  To do so requires passage of such a measure by a 66.67% legislative majority or passage  in two successive legislative sessions by a 50% majority.  The bill was passed by the PA House and Senate by 50.5% and 52.0%, respectively, in the 2019-20 session, but failed to garner enough of a majority to allow it to come up for a vote in the 2021-22 session, in which the Democrats controlled the House, and the measure died.   

In August 2023, the State Supreme Court issued a significant decision upholding Pennsylvania's expansion of mail-in voting in 2019, affirming another measure in favor of voting rights.

After the 2020 census results, in a required redistricting made more substantial because the number of Pennsylvania’s Congressional seats had declined from 18 to 17, the Legislature again revised the electoral maps.  The Republican-controlled House and Senate created a highly gerrymandered set of districts.  However, this time the governor, a Democrat, vetoed the legislation to implement the maps.  This impasse brought the dispute over redistricting before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court again. 

The Court ruled that the districts were overly partisan and appointed an expert to create fairer ones.  In the 2022 election, with these new district lines in place, the Congressional allocation for Pennsylvania remained balanced, with eight Republicans and nine Democrats.  Furthermore, the State legislature shifted to a Democratic majority, but by just one representative. Meanwhile, the Senate remained in Republican hands. 

Although election reforms to expand voter access and protect the integrity of local election officials may be too slow in coming for some, this past September the progressive Democratic governor, Josh Shapiro, simplified automatic voter registration for Pennsylvanians when they obtain or renew a driver's license. 

So, all in all, in Pennsylvania the prospects look encouraging for taking a balanced approach to protecting the right to vote and not instituting some of the new restrictions adopted in other battleground states like Wisconsin and Georgia.  In the short term, courts have ensured that the districting process in Pennsylvania is fair. 

Nonetheless, in the long run, having a truly independent commission draw the district lines, following the California approach, would be far superior, as we discuss in our Gerrymandering Primer. Common Cause gives Pennsylvania’s redistricting process a C+ rating because of this structural flaw in the system.

What is essential for classmates who reside in Pennsylvania is to remain vigilant and follow developments in the run-up to the 2024 election. There are still many politicians who, if left unchecked, would seek to enact legislation limiting voting access. 

As you may remember, Pennsylvania was one of the states where there were sustained attempts to invalidate the 2020 Presidential election results through political maneuvers and frivolous lawsuits. The Brennan Center for Law and Justice at New York University provides a list  and in-depth analysis of current challenges to election rights in the state.

Watch for developments in two key areas: 

• Decisions on whether ballot curing is allowed, which is still being contested in the courts.  One particular case to follow is the ruling by U.S. District Judge Susan Paradise Baxter in  November 2023, which held that mailed-in ballots that arrive on time, but in envelopes without dates handwritten by Pennsylvania voters, should be counted. The decision is likely to be appealed, probably all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
• Legislative attempts to speed up the counting of absentee ballots, such as by allowing outer envelopes that can be opened ahead of election day.  One such legislative proposal failed to pass in April.    

As you may recall, Pennsylvania’s slow ballot counting created a great deal of confusion in the 2020 election, which election deniers seized upon as support for their unfounded claims of fraud.   

 Pennsylvania is truly an example of our democracy at risk, and we must make sure that the right to vote, particularly the use of mail-in ballots, is protected.