By Ryan Mills
Monday, April 5, 2021
On Election Day in 2018, Matthew Wilson arrived at his
polling location and saw a long line of voters outside the suburban Atlanta
high school.
The first-time Democratic candidate for the state House
of Representatives ordered four pizzas, and handed out slices to the people in line, while a campaign
worker photographed it all and then posted pictures on social media, according
to a local newspaper account.
Two years later, in the run-up to the 2020 general
election, Georgia state Representative Roger Bruce and a local county
commissioner were photographed handing out snacks to voters waiting in line at the
courthouse of an Atlanta exurb. Bruce, a Democrat running unopposed for
reelection, wore a “State Representative Roger Bruce” shirt, according to
another newspaper.
Those are just two cases Georgia elections leaders are
investigating for possible violations of state law, including allegations of
vote buying and illegal campaigning within 150 feet of a polling location. Both
Wilson and Bruce have denied knowingly violating the law.
A Republican effort to rein in the practice, known as
“line warming,” by clarifying that the law prohibits offering any gifts —
including food and drinks — within 150 feet of a polling location, may be
the most controversial, misunderstood, and mischaracterized provision of
Georgia’s new voting-security law. Left-wing critics have seized on the “food
or drink” provision to characterize the law as a racist attempt to
disenfranchise minority voters, and to essentially punish them by denying them
refreshments while they’re waiting in line. President Joe Biden has cited the
provision, telling reporters you “don’t need anything else to know that this is
nothing but punitive, designed to keep people from voting.” Cowed by activists,
Major League Baseball on Friday pulled the 2021 All-Star Game out of
Atlanta over its objections to the law.
But the law doesn’t ban giving voters food or drinks, as
Biden said. Instead, it clarifies where it can be done — 150 feet from a
polling location entrance and 25 feet from the line of voters.
The reason for the new provision was to cut down on the
real, and increasingly abused practice of line warming, which already was
against the law in Georgia, the authors of the state House and Senate
election-security bills told National Review. The two bills were
eventually merged into Senate Bill 202, which was signed in late March by
Georgia governor Brian Kemp.
The food-and-drink provision of Georgia’s law is based on
a similar provision in New York state’s election law, state Senate majority
leader Mike Dugan said.
Numerous Complaints and a Crack Down
In the weeks leading up to January’s high-profile U.S.
Senate runoffs in Georgia, line warming was becoming such an issue that
Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger sent a notice to state election officials directing
them to crack down on the practice. The state is now investigating several
allegations of candidates and their supporters handing out food, drinks, and
coupons for sandwiches to voters waiting in line. It’s also looking into at
least two cases of food trucks sponsored by political organizations that parked
within the 150-foot voting buffer.
According to one local newspaper account, on the day of the January 5
runoff, a resident was seen passing out snacks to people waiting in line to
vote at a suburban Atlanta elementary school. The snack station had a sign and
phone number for the “Georgia Voter Protection Line,” run by the state
Democratic Party.
“We received numerous complaints and have multiple
investigations into active campaigning within restricted areas and to giving
away things of value for voting, both of which are illegal,” Raffensperger’s
office said in an email to National Review. “It was clear that
campaigns and organizations were confused about the law and clarification was
needed.”
In response to the line-warming activity, the authors of
the voting-security law — Dugan and state Representative Barry Fleming
— clarified the rules in their omnibus bill, prohibiting “any person” from
giving “any money or gifts, including but not limited to, food or drink” to a
voter in line.
“It’s always been a part of Georgia law that we have this
150-foot area around the polls where you don’t allow campaign activity,”
Fleming told National Review. But candidates and political groups
have been pushing the boundaries, he said, and line warming “was increasing in
activity.”
“It got to the point that, according to people that we
spoke with, it was becoming much more of an area of activity, rather than just
people getting ready to vote,” Fleming said.
The new law allows poll workers to make food and drinks
available generally to voters in line, and it certainly doesn’t stop voters
from bringing snacks or drinks with them, Dugan said. Candidates, political
groups, or anyone else who wants to offer food, drinks or other items, can
still make them available outside the 150-foot buffer and 25 feet from the
voting line. They can still approach people in the parking lot, and before they
get in line to vote.
“You can still have the water, and you can have the snacks
and everything,” Dugan said. “You just can’t actively work those that are
waiting in line to vote. If they come to you, that’s one thing. You can’t go to
them while they’re waiting.”
Prior to the new voting law, it already was against the
law to provide “money or gifts for the purpose of registering as a voter,
voting, or voting for a particular candidate.” But Dugan said the prohibitions
on what constituted line warming were “a little loose,” and “it started
becoming more and more aggressive.”
“The part that was getting a little bit carried away was,
‘We’re not campaigning. We’re handing out free drinks and snacks,’” Dugan said.
“Let’s take it to the extremes. Let’s say the Proud Boys decided they were
going to come and stand outside of precincts and pass out water and go up and
down the lines. That could be taken by some as voter intimidation.”
The new law clarifies that handing out money or gifts
— including food and drinks, or really anything else of value — to
voters in line is prohibited for everyone, regardless of their political or
nonpolitical intent. “We don’t really want to put the poll workers in the
position to have to define (political intent) constantly all day long,” Fleming
said.
Biden cited the food-and-drink provision when he called
the new law an “atrocity” that “makes Jim Crow look like Jim Eagle.” Dugan
called his comments “unfortunate and disturbing.”
“You never want to be called out by the president,” he
said. “But it’s also, you never want your president to be that wrong when he
says something publicly. He’s just wrong.”
Georgia Provision Based on New York Election Law
When crafting the voting law, Georgia lawmakers explored
election laws in every state, Dugan said. Most states have some distance limits for campaigning at polling locations, from ten feet
in Pennsylvania to 300 feet in Iowa, where influencing voters, soliciting
votes, political persuasion, and passing out campaign materials and literature
is prohibited.
Montana has a law prohibiting candidates, their family
members, and their campaign workers from offering voters “alcohol, tobacco,
food, drink or anything of value.” Dugan said the food-and-drink provision in
the new Georgia law is based on a New York state election law that
prohibits “furnishing money or entertainment to induce attendance at the
polls,” including “meat, drink, tobacco, refreshment or provision” unless it is
worth less than a dollar and the person providing it is not identified.
“We copied that from New York,” Dugan said, though there
are differences between Georgia’s and New York’s provisions. Georgia doesn’t
have a one-dollar exception, for example.
Dugan said the efforts to tighten the state’s voting laws
really started after the 2018 election, when Democrat Stacey Abrams refused to
concede her race for governor to Kemp.
“This started after the Abrams campaign, where she was
the one making all of the allegations, and saying that we needed to do reform,”
Dugan said. “As a matter of fact, some of our speeches from the floor were
direct lifts of speeches Democratic members made after that election.”
Dugan said the election-security efforts ramped up even
more after then-President Donald Trump disputed the 2020 election results.
Trump lost the state by fewer than 12,000 votes in November.
With Georgia so closely divided politically, Dugan said,
the state will likely have close elections for years to come, and “we can’t
have this uncertainty that we had for the last two (elections) in a row, ‘Is
this a valid election?’ That why we codified some stuff that was best
practices, and then we just cleaned up some other areas.”
Fleming and Dugan said critics of the new law aren’t
pointing out that it expands early voting, codifies ballot drop boxes for the
first time (the drop boxes would have otherwise gone away when the COVID-19
medical emergency was over), and makes efforts to cut down long waits at the
polls by giving the state authority to require more polling places and voting
machines in overcrowded precincts.
“That’s part of the whole goal, is to make (voting) more
efficient and better,” Fleming said. “The idea of long lines on Election Day
are becoming less of a problem in Georgia, will be less of a problem because of
this bill.”
The state can combat misinformation about the new law
through education, Dugan said. But intentional disinformation about the law is
another issue. “That is a problem we’re facing right now,” Dugan said. “When
you’re knowingly and willingly spreading false information to advance a
narrative, I think that’s reprehensible.”
Dugan said he was “obviously disappointed” to hear
criticism of the new law from major Georgia-based corporations, including
Coca-Cola and Delta Air Lines. Delta CEO Ed Bastian has called the law “unacceptable”
and said it “does not match Delta’s values.”
“I had representatives from Delta in my office last week,
and they gave me no indication they were going to make a statement like that,”
Dugan said. “As a matter of fact, I go through the provisions of the bill, and
they didn’t go, ‘Yeah, but we don’t like this part.’ They didn’t say any of that.
I had a representative from Coca-Cola there. Nothing.”
Fleming said corporate leaders are afraid of
potential boycotts.
“It used to be called a shakedown,” Fleming said. “The
Left is very much in favor of boycotts. The Right, not so much. And corporate
America reacts.”
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