Doubting Democracy (Part 8 of 8)
This final piece details the boring specifics on 2018 in Georgia (along with a few concluding thoughts at the end).
This is the second part of the final chapter in this series (read the first part here). This piece breaks down the four primary complaints made by Democrats over the 2018 gubernatorial election in Georgia, and then concludes with some final thoughts.
Complaint 1. PURGING THE VOTER ROLLS
APM REPORTS: The removal process is triggered if you don’t vote, respond to a notice, or make contact with election officials over a three-year span. Then if you don’t vote or make contact in two more federal election cycles, you'll be purged from the rolls. The process takes seven years.
Despite the ominous phrasing that Democrats employ, the act of “purging the voter rolls” is not something I find to be worrying — provided it is done within reasonable guidelines (such as those outlined above). In fact, I personally think this “purging” process is something I would support being replicated in every single state (even though I fully acknowledge that polling shows most Americans do not agree with me on this one). As it is laid out in Georgia’s laws from 2018, the process takes seven years to take effect and only happens after a person has both not voted in three election cycles and has failed to respond to the notices sent to them by the state during the last two cycles. No active voters would ever be purged by this process.
Furthermore, a “purged” voter can still vote. All they have to do is re-register before the next election. Again, I see absolutely nothing unreasonable about asking someone to register again if they’ve been inactive for three election cycles. People move all the time — even within the same city — and almost no one takes the time to keep the county clerk’s office updated (especially if they haven’t been actively voting). Honestly, every person should be checking their registration status ahead of each election anyway. But as always, the devil is in the details when it comes to election law, so you have to look at how the specific state you’re analyzing conducts their “purging” process. For instance, if the state government is waiting until just before election day to remove the voters from the rolls, then that is clearly malicious and should not happen — but that does not appear to be the case in Georgia’s 2018 election. The voters who were “purged” in that cycle were removed a full year in advance of the election (July of 2017 to be precise).1
With all that being said, I do believe that this type of law is only fair if coupled with same-day voter registration and no deadline for people to re-register up to and including election day — which is something that Georgia did not do in 2018. They required voters to be registered no later than 29 days before the election, and I do not support such policies. That APM article I mentioned above claimed that a full 87,000 voters in Georgia were unable to vote because they had not been able to register until after the deadline. However, I have also heard that this number is contested, and may have been debunked, but due to the endless paywalls going up on news sites now — which is totally understandable, even if still unfortunate — I cannot confirm or deny that claim.
This ACLU article did reference an ACJ article I was hoping to read (but which was behind a paywall), and it stated that according to The Atlanta Constitution-Journal, “since 2017, more than 87,000 people re-registered to vote after losing their eligibility when they should not have.” So the 87,000 number may have actually been referring to the total number of people who re-registered after being purged, not the number who did not get to vote because of the deadline. In fact, the APM article which reported the 87,000 number had also said some 70,000 Georgians had re-registered and voted after being purged, so perhaps maybe it is the difference between those two figures (which would be 17,000) who found themselves ineligible to vote because they missed the deadline. But again, I cannot be certain — nor can we know if any of those 17,000 chose not to vote for other reasons. (This annoyingly confusing cluster-fuck of a rundown may give you some idea of why it is so difficult for the casual reader to analyze this stuff in a thorough and objective way.)
Stacey Abrams, in her non-concession speech following the election, stated, “More than a million citizens found their names stripped from the rolls by the Secretary of State [Brian Kemp], including a 92 year-old civil rights activist who had cast her ballot in the same neighborhood since 1968.” To begin with, I do want to highlight how Brian Kemp was in fact the acting Secretary of State (which oversees elections) when he ran for governor in 2018 — which I do agree with Democrats should have been considered a blatant and obvious conflict of interest (unfortunately, modern-day Republicans tend to care little about such things). I should also note that the “million citizens” Abrams is referring to is not the number of voters who were removed from the rolls in 2018 specifically. It most likely referred to the total number of people removed from the rolls over the course of Kemp’s entire term as Secretary of State (starting in 2010). The reports on the exact number of people purged specifically in 2018 varied from 107,000 to 340,000 to 560,000 — so I really am not sure exactly how many it was.
Anyway, let’s rewind back to Stacey Abrams’ anecdote about the “92 year-old civil rights activist who had cast her ballot in the same neighborhood since 1968.” This story jumped out at me, because if this woman had been casting a ballot since 1968, then she wouldn’t have been eligible to be purged from the rolls under Georgia law. Now, maybe there’s more to this story than I know about, but if Abrams is going to bring this anecdote up then the burden of proof is on her to explain why it was the state’s fault, and not the woman’s own fault, that she was removed from the rolls. Because like it or not, this issue is insanely complicated and you have to “do the work” to verify your claims, regardless of whether you are claiming “voter fraud” or “voter suppression.”
The example Abrams gave would not apply to the manner in which voters were purged from the rolls in Georgia in 2018. If there was some kind of error, or flaw in the system that caused it, then Abrams needs to make that clear. Because, if true, that would definitely be something worth worrying about. However, when Democrats just throw this stuff out there without explaining it, you start to get the impression that they’re not telling you the full story (or that they haven’t bothered to find out the whole story themselves).
Was this incident indicative of something institutionally wrong with the law, or indicative of a problem with the administration of that law? Or was it just a one-off mistake made by some office worker who had not had their coffee that morning? Or had this woman just not voted in a really long time and did not think it necessary to check her registration status before voting? I mean, maybe, just maybe, this 92-year-old woman had some problems understanding the registration process and wrongly attributed it to something more nefarious? Which is still a problem because we are getting to a point where our voting laws are making this whole process cumbersome and needlessly confusing for a lot of people (even those who are not elderly or impaired), and some states are doing absolutely nothing to rectify that. Our national, state, and local governments absolutely have an obligation and a duty to assist their citizens in getting to the polls — not keeping them away from them.
Complaint 2. THE EXACT-MATCH LAW
NBC NEWS: Under the policy, information on voter applications must precisely match information on file with the Georgia Department of Driver Services or the Social Security Administration. Election officials can place non-matching applications on hold. An application could be held because of an entry error or a dropped hyphen in a last name, for example.
I’ll just say up top that I tend to disagree with Democrats who think the exact-match law was done completely in bad faith; but I also tend to disagree with the Republicans who believe the exact-match law was in any way useful or necessary. Essentially, it states that if your registration does not exactly match up with the information in the Georgia state system, your registration can be put “on hold” until the mismatch is cleared up. The flagged voter is then sent a notice to take care of the issue before election day (although I have wondered if the notice is sent to the address on the registration, or the one in the state’s system, or if it is sent to both).
I will note that if the individual who is “on hold” votes in person, then none of this should be a problem. When you are at the polling place, the system will show that your status is “on hold” and the election worker can simply verify your information right then and there. It’s primarily only an issue if you are voting by mail. Because some Georgia voters might have sent their mail-in ballots in without realizing their registration was “on hold” (although I was not able to find any firm numbers on how many such cases may or may not have existed). Although if that is the case, then the mail-in ballot would become a provisional ballot, and it would still be counted as long as the voter cleared up the issue before the deadline set after election day (assuming they were made aware of the problem).
Brian Kemp defended the need for the exact-match law by noting that the New Georgia Project — the remarkably successful get-out-the-vote organization led by Stacey Abrams in the run-up to the 2018 election — primarily used paper forms when registering a bunch of new voters and “did not adequately train canvassers to ensure legible, complete forms.” Kemp stated that this was why Republicans were concerned about ensuring the information on these forms was legitimate and matched up with actual people in the system. I have zero doubt that these concerns stemmed from the things I wrote about in my previous posts, such as the ACORN scandal and the (often misleading) Project Veritas videos of Democratic campaign workers.
Just to be clear, I am not saying that Stacey Abrams and the New Georgia Project were trying to create fraudulent registrations on purpose — I am only saying that given the history of what has happened in the past with these get-out-the-vote organizations, I can understand where the Republican paranoia (however misplaced) came from. I do feel that many Republicans really did believe they had to worry about another ACORN-type incident happening in Georgia, even if I also believe that the more unscrupulous and conspiratorial figures among their party took advantage of the situation to try and push their own false “voter fraud” claims.
So, was the exact-match law necessary? Probably not. But was the exact-match law responsible for disenfranchising minority voters? Probably not. In total, some 53,000 voters were said to have been put “on hold” by this law and it was reported that about 70% of them were black. This obviously fed the narrative that the law was targeting minorities. However, most of the “inadequately trained canvassers” (in Brian Kemp’s words) who were sending in multitudes of hand-written registrations were doing so specifically on behalf of black voters, since that’s who the New Georgia Project was primarily targeting. So it should not be surprising that it was from within this demographic that the majority of the “mis-matches” occurred.
To be honest, I have always applauded Stacey Abrams’ impressive work on bringing out a lot of new voters in Georgia, even if I am incredibly critical of the way she behaved in the aftermath of this 2018 election. She tackled this issue of “getting out the vote” in exactly the right way, by providing both assistance and education to these new voters to make sure they knew how to navigate the process. Which I personally think should be the state’s responsibility, but I am still glad that there is someone out there like Stacey Abrams who is doing the state’s job for them (even if she shouldn’t have to).
Complaint 3. CLOSING OF POLLING PLACES
WASHINGTON POST: More than 200 polling places across the state were closed, primarily in poor and minority neighborhoods. Voters reported long lines, malfunctioning voting machines and other problems that delayed or thwarted voting in those areas.
I personally feel the complaints about the closing of polling places are among the most justified of “voter suppression” claims. Although, as with Florida in 2000, a lot of it has to do with these poor, minority communities being underfunded and poorly run rather than it necessarily being a conspiracy by Republicans. After all, many of the polling places closed in Georgia in 2018 were in heavily Trump-supporting rural districts, but they were closed just the same because they ate up the county’s rather small budget even though they got almost no foot traffic from residents in the area. So, you always have to follow the (lack of) money.
I have also read that it was the county officials in Georgia who were solely responsible for the management of the polling places, not the Secretary of State. So even if some of these closures were done maliciously, you can’t actually blame it on Brian Kemp. On the one hand, I do worry there could be more corrupt and/or racist officials at the county level than in the upper levels of the state government. Yet on the other hand, most minority counties have local minority officials running them, so you wouldn’t expect those officials to be the ones targeting their local constituents for purely racist reasons.
To give Stacey Abrams some credit, she too pointed out that the problem was also because these counties were often “understaffed, ill-equipped or simply unable to serve its basic function for lack of a power cord.” However, her supporters also put out a narrative that Brian Kemp may not have controlled the polling places, but he controlled the money — the insinuation being that he withheld it purposely to get these polling places shut down (I have seen no evidence of this). Admittedly, this issue was too complicated for me to get into as deeply as I wanted — as it would require analyzing all the polling places in Georgia county by county — but I did run across one story about how when Randolph County had plans to close some polling places in black communities, both Stacey Abrams and Brian Kemp went down there and pushed the county officials to reverse that decision — which they ultimately did.
USA TODAY: Tommy Coleman, an attorney for the county in southwest Georgia, said he doesn't think the board members meant harm by considering the proposal but that it might have been ill-timed. “It gives you the appearance that you’re trying to do something to alter the vote in November. I don’t think that’s the case. I’m certain it isn’t," he said. “The people who do this in rural Georgia – these two people – are just volunteers.”
Of course, that’s only one anecdote, but it does point to a less malicious explanation for some of the polling place closures than Democrats have put out there. That being said, I am willing to be swayed on this if I were to see further evidence. However, I have been burned far too many times by progressives (and, to be fair, conservatives too) by taking their claims at face value, only to later find out they were less than meets the eye. So these days, I tend to maintain a healthy skepticism about such accusations unless I see solid evidence to support them. I myself would certainly prefer to see an overabundance of polling places in all areas on election day, but until you have counties with an money to burn, and volunteer workers to spare, that probably won’t happen.
Complaint 4. MALICIOUS VOTING MACHINES
WASHINGTON POST: A still-unexplained 4.2 percent undervote in the lieutenant governor’s race, especially prevalent in minority precincts, could indicate serious problems with paperless, touch-screen voting machines in those areas.
11ALIVE: The NAACP filed complaints with the state alleging the voting machines were recording inaccurate data. But the state's initial findings assert that it’s the voters who are pressing the touch screens incorrectly.
The complaints about “vote flipping” and other various issues with the voting machines in 2018 (an accusation which should sound familiar to any Republicans who supported Trump’s “voter fraud” claims in 2020) is probably the most alarming of all of the accusations levied by the Democrats. The only problem is that I cannot find anyone able to produce any actual evidence supporting such claims (which should also sound very familiar to Republicans who supported Trump’s “voter fraud” claims in 2020). The NAACP actually filed a suit on it in the Georgia courts, but it did not seem that the accusations held up to scrutiny.
I had a hard time finding the specific ruling on that court case, but news reports stated that Judge Amy Totenberg actually ruled in 2019 in favor of the NAACP. However, as far as I can tell, the ruling was not validating the claims made in 2018 of “vote flipping” or any other nefarious or crooked behavior by the machines. Instead, the ruling merely agreed that the Georgia voting machines were susceptible to issues of security and reliability due to being old and out of date. One of the main complaints was that the machines did not produce any kind of paper record or receipt to validate that the voter’s choices on the touch screen were registered correctly, and the ruling pushed to the state to install new and improved voting machines to correct this.2
There are some tasty bits of irony to be found in this story: The choice to install new electronic voting machines was not supported by the Georgia Democrats, as the Democrats wanted to go back to a system of hand-marked paper ballots (the kind of system that had caused Democrats so much trouble in the Florida recount of 2000 or Republicans in the Minnesota Senate race of 2008). In addition, it was this measure that was passed by Republicans that awarded the contract for the new machines to Dominion Voting Systems. These are the very same infamous Dominion machines that Trump and his legal team falsely accused in 2020 of being controlled by the Venezuelan government and of having its servers in Germany raided by US authorities.
And, of course, there were also accusations on social media of Dominion being linked to Antifa and calls from Trump supporters like Mike Lindell and Elon Musk to ban voting machines and go back to a paper ballots (which is exactly what the Democrats who had questioned the 2018 election had called for in the first place). Dominion also famously won an enormous $787 million settlement from Fox News over their coverage that had validated the baseless accusations against their company by Trump and his supporters.
The court fights over these Dominion machines continued all the way up to this latest 2024 election (and may continue on after it). Trump’s decisive victory this year appears to have at least given us a temporary reprieve from the conspiracies but there is no reason to be optimistic about the future. Before Trump won Georgia this year by around 115,000 votes, Republicans loyal to Trump had managed to take a majority on the state’s election board — which is supposed to be an impartial body even though the Republican members were all election deniers in 2020 and have been praised by name at Trump’s rallies as “pit bulls fighting for honesty, transparency and victory.”
Likewise, the Senate race in Pennsylvania this year is being contested by Democrats, with Democrat Bob Casey refusing to concede to Republican Dave McCormick (as of the time I write this). [Update: Bob Casey conceded to McCormick the day after I wrote this.] In fact, it is in some ways worse than 2018 because Democratic officials in a few counties have openly defied the law and counted votes that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court (in a bipartisan decision) ruled ineligible.3 The Democratic chair on the Bucks County Commissions Board, Diane Ellis-Marseglia, caused a lot of controversy by stating, “I think we all know that precedent by a court doesn’t matter anymore in this country, and people violate laws any time they want. So, for me, if I violate this law it’s because I want a court to pay attention. There’s nothing more important than counting votes.”
To be fair, most Democrats and liberal commentators in the media seem to be in agreement that it is clearly wrong for Democratic commissioners to engage in such blatant violations of the law. Still, the stance of some Democrats, like Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, seem to be trying to do a bit more of a balancing act by firmly condemning the commissioners’ defiance of the court ruling but also supporting Bob Casey’s call for a recount (citing the fact that Dave McCormick pushed for a recount himself when he lost back in 2022).
One thing that has struck me as I went through this journey of our growing doubts in democracy over the last 25 years, is that it was so much easier to analyze items from the 2000s than it was to find clear and accurate information on the controversies in the last 10 years or so. I don’t know if that is simply due to the saturation of information that has occurred online as the media landscape shifted away from newspapers to social media sites; away from programs like Meet The Press & Face The Nation to programs like The Daily Show & The Joe Rogan Experience; and away from monotone commentary by “experts” to viral videos created by “gotchya” pundits with huge numbers of online followers. And to be clear, I’m not saying that I think the legacy media was better or worse than the new media— nor am I denying that it deserved to be discredited to some extent — I’m only saying that its collapse will lead to different (arguably worse) problems. Especially as authentic journalism becomes harder to fund and gets hidden behind paywalls — where only those with disposable income can view it — while the masses get more and more of their news from the “alternative media” promoting increasingly fringe points of view from either the left or the right (and all points in between).
I think the biggest question for me will be whether or not these negative trends can be rolled back once Trump has finally disappeared from our political landscape. Some people have persuasively argued that it is him specifically that has really allowed these awful trends to go mainstream, as no other figure in American history has his gift for promoting his brand of divisive, conspiratorial, us-versus-them politics so successfully. Yet others have argued (equally persuasively) that the pandora’s box Trump opened will not simply be shut once he is gone. And I will openly admit that I really don’t know myself which it is — and I think anyone who says they do know is merely guessing.
DONALD TRUMP [Speaking to the Fraternal Order of Police during the 2024 campaign]: Watch for the voter fraud. Because we win. Without voter fraud, we win so easily. Hopefully, we’re going to win anyway. But we want to keep it down. You can keep it down just by watching. Because believe it or not, they’re afraid of that badge. They’re afraid of you people. They’re afraid of that.
To be clear, I think the article I linked-to in this paragraph was far too biased in favor of the Democrats’ claims of “voter suppression” and most of its figures were likely inaccurate. However, I still used it to illustrate my point since even this article gave examples that I believe showed that an undue burden was not placed on “purged” voters in Georgia. In that article, I also found it interesting that they mentioned “the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights reported that Georgia is the only state formerly under federal oversight to adopt all five of the most common voter suppression tactics: voter ID laws, proof of citizenship requirements, purges, cuts in early voting, and polling place closures.” As I have mentioned already, I think labeling things such as voter ID laws (supported by 84% of Americans), proof of citizenship (supported by 83% of Americans), and purges of voter rolls (which I admitted I am out of the mainstream on as it is opposed by 64% of Americans) to be considered “voter suppression” is just bad policy on the part of Democrats. Because it not only displays their unwillingness to compromise on good-faith measures, but it also discredits their arguments when tackling the things that actually place unnecessary burdens on voting: such as cuts in early voting (supported by 76% of Americans) and the closures of polling places (there was no data on that on in the Gallup poll I am citing from).
This is a complaint I myself certainly agree with. When I lived in Austin, the touchscreen machines always produced a paper ballot that you could look over and confirm before haivng it scanned in officially. The system I used this year in Dallas was done with a scantron, filled in by ballpoint pen, that then was scanned into a machine without producing any kind of confirmation or receipt at all on how your votes were registered. I admit it made me feel a little uncomfortable, and I would certainly prefer a method that is more transparent and gives voters more confidence in the system.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has 5 Democrats and 2 Republicans on it, and 2 of the Democrats joined 2 of the Republicans in supporting the 4-3 decision.