NBC News: “After 15 years allowing voters to cast absentee ballots without excuses, Georgia Republicans say the practice has got to go.
The Republican-controlled state Senate votes Monday on a package of legislation that would, among other things, limit mail-in voting primarily to Georgians who are elderly, disabled or out of town on Election Day — one of dozens of restrictive election-related measures under consideration in state legislatures.
Supporters of the measures, who include allies of former President Donald Trump and those who stood up to his bogus allegations of fraud after Joe Biden upset decades of Republican dominance to win the state, say the bills are commonsense election security efforts. Democrats, voting rights advocates and civil rights groups say something else is going on.
“It’s pathetically obvious to anyone paying attention that when Trump lost the election and Georgia flipped control of the U.S. Senate to Democrats shortly after, Republicans got the message that they were in a political death spiral,” state Rep. Renitta Shannon, a Democrat from Decatur, said during a floor debate over the Republican proposals in Georgia last week. “And now they are doing anything they can do to silence the voices of Black and brown voters specifically because they largely powered these wins.””