But even with all these hurdles, a cadre of advocates, nonprofits, churches, and community-minded elected officials have shown up year after year for decades, working hard to protect the right to participate in democracy—especially for Black and other minority voters, who are often the most affected by voting restrictions. 

“We have organizations across the state that are part of the Civic Engagement Roundtable that’s organized by One Voice,” said Representative Zakiya Summers, a Democrat in the state house, referencing a Jackson nonprofit focused on policy advocacy. “These organizations are on conference calls every month. They have created voting rights guides and information that partner organizations can distribute in their community to get people educated and engaged.”

In the lead-up to this year’s primary elections in August, these advocates were gearing up to contend with the latest obstacle that Mississippi’s Republican-controlled legislature had thrown their way: Senate Bill 2358. The bill, which passed in the spring and went into effect on July 1, prohibits anyone from assisting another voter in handling and returning a mail-in ballot unless they are an immediate family or household member, a caregiver, or authorized election worker or mail carrier. Anyone caught violating the law could face up to a year in county jail and a fine of up to $3000.

Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves praised the bill when he signed it into law, saying that it would protect against “ballot harvesting,” or the practice of collecting ballots en masse, a fear that is central to the unfounded conspiracies about voter fraud that conservatives around the country latched onto since the 2020 election.

Despite a lack of evidence of widespread ballot harvesting or other fraud in Mississippi elections, the bill has threatened to limit the number of volunteers and advocates involved in get-out-the-vote efforts from sending or retrieving ballots on behalf of voters they don’t live with. More importantly, it could impede ballot access for people who count on this kind of assistance. 

“It just seemed like another barrier that would prevent people with disabilities from being able to vote autonomously,” says Jane Walton, the communications officer for Disability Rights Mississippi, which includes voting access among their advocacy work. “The bill in question dealt with whether or not someone can have a person assist them. Really, it’s an issue of whether a person with a disability has the autonomy to choose to vote in a way that is most accessible to them.”

Soon after it was passed, groups including Disability Rights Mississippi and Mississippi’s League of Women Voters sued the state in federal court to block the law, stating it “impermissibly restricts voters with disabilities from having a person of their choice assist them in submitting their completed mail-in absentee ballots.” On July 26, a federal judge sided with them and temporarily blocked the law, saying it disenfranchised voters with disabilities and violated the Voting Rights Act.

The decision blocked enactment of SB 2358 just in time for the Aug. 8 primary, and will also prevent it from taking effect ahead of the general election in November, when Mississippians will vote on nearly every major office, including governor and lieutenant governor, secretary of state, and representatives in both legislative chambers. Polling indicates that Republican incumbents who supported the bill—including the embattled Reeves, and Attorney General Lynn Fitch—are favored to win in this deep red state.

But no matter who people cast their vote for, advocates are more concerned about some residents being able to cast a vote at all. The suspension of SB 2358 offers some temporary relief, but these advocates fear that the threat of similar legislation still looms.

“For the past two years, we’ve been monitoring legislation that [has]pretty much been pushed by the Secretary of State every year to deal with ballot harvesting, Jarvis Dortch, Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in Mississippi, told Bolts. ”That makes it harder to return a ballot by absentee, especially individuals with disabilities.”

Before the passage of this bill, advocates already had their hands full navigating existing restrictions that make it harder for citizens to vote, and for Black candidates to win. 

The state requires eligible voters to register 30 days before elections, one of the earliest deadlines in the country. This means that often, advocates must find eligible voters early, and educate them on the importance of registering long before there’s any major discussion of elections in the media, because there’s no early voting or same-day registration options as a backup. And advocates must repeat this process every year thanks to Mississippi’s odd-year elections. 

But in order to even register, eligible voters must comply with a stringent voter ID law, passed in 2011 by way of a ballot initiative that established a strict list of acceptable forms of ID, including a birth certificate, firearms permit, driver’s license, college ID card, US passport, tribal ID, or Voter ID card. 

“Voter ID targeted vulnerable populations who may not have access to ID or may not have access to a birth certificate so they can get an ID. The law was written so strongly that the state was willing to provide a free Voter ID,” says Summers.

Voting absentee by mail is also an involved process in Mississippi. As opposed to the majority of states, which offer no-excuse absentee voting, mail ballots are only available to populations with qualifying characteristics, including those living out-of-state, students, people with disabilities, people over 65, and certain others. Absentee ballots must be postmarked by election day to be counted. 

“We make it harder than anyone else to get folks registered and make it hard for people to vote absentee,” said Dortch. We don’t provide early voting. Now, instead of making it easier for folks to vote, we’re trying to get people off the voting rolls… and make it harder for people to actually vote absentee. When we have one of the hardest processes to vote absentee in the country. It doesn’t make sense.” 

Mississippi has also had a longtime a lifelong ban on voting for people convicted of certain types of felonies, a policy which has disenfranchised nearly 130,000 Black voters, or 16 percent of the state’s adult Black population. It’s one of only three states, alongside Tennessee and Virginia, where anyone stripped of voting rights loses it for their whole life. They can only regain it if they receive an exceedingly rare pardon from the legislature or the governor.

A federal appeals court this summer struck down that system as unconstitutional, calling it a “cruel and unusual punishment,” and denouncing Mississippi as “an outlier among its sister states, bucking a clear and consistent trend in our Nation against permanent disenfranchisement.” The state appealed the decision in late August, and the rights of hundreds of thousands of Mississippians are still hanging in the balance.

Perhaps unsurprisingly given all these restrictions, Mississippi has one of the lowest voter turnout rates in the country. In the 2022 midterms, Mississippi ranked eighth from last, with roughly 46 percent of voters showing up. And turnout for non-white voters was even lower.

Democrats and progressives have historically championed an increase in access to voting options in the state, and have in turn looked to Black and other disenfranchised voters for support in elections. This upcoming race is no exception. Democrat gubernatorial candidate Brandon Presley, for example, is betting on bases of support in majority-Black enclaves around the capital city of Jackson, as well as pockets of white and immigrant progressive and moderate voters scattered around the Mississippi Delta in his long-shot bid to oust Tate Reeves.

Ty Pinkins, the Democratic candidate for secretary of state, is a recent addition after previous candidate Shuwaski Young dropped out of the race for health reasons. While Pinkins has limited time to build name recognition before the contest, he’s hoping that a campaign message of easing the state’s restrictive voting laws will connect with voters.

“Making sure people can register to vote online makes sense, making sure that we have a way for people to do early voting—that makes sense, and not restricting access to the ballot for people with disabilities,” Pinkins told Mississippi Today. 

SB 2358 remains on hold until further hearings are held and a final decision is handed down. And while advocates, voters, and progressive candidates can continue to move as if the law had never been signed, the landscape for voting rights remains difficult in Mississippi. But advocates are quick to mention that they will continue to work to make progress. 

“We along with our partners and our co-counsel are absolutely prepared to do everything that we can to protect the rights of citizens with disabilities,” said Walton. “Whatever that road looks like going forward, we’re prepared to fight for accessibility in Mississippi’s voting system.”

Correction (Sept. 14): An earlier version of this post misspelled the name of the communications officer from Disability Rights Mississippi.

This article is part of U.S. Democracy Day, a nationwide collaborative on Sept. 15, the International Day of Democracy, in which news organizations cover how democracy works and the threats it faces. To learn more, visit usdemocracyday.org.

The post Mississippi Organizers Navigate Difficult Voting Rights Terrain in Run Up to November appeared first on Bolts.

From the very first days of early voting, voters queued in long lines all around the state waiting to cast their ballots in person. Some polling sites in the Atlanta metro area had estimated wait times of two to three hours.

A handful of counties offered Saturday voting on Nov. 26 after Thanksgiving, despite objections from the state’s Republican leadership, such as Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. The majority of the state opened the polls on Monday Nov. 28, which saw a record 300,000 people turn out. According to the secretary of state’s website, more than 1.7 million votes have been cast in early voting so far.

Speaking with Bolts, Crystal Greer from Protect the Vote GA, a grassroots group formed to combat voter suppression, said the current scramble to turn out voters was exactly what voting advocates worried about after the passage of Senate Bill 202 shortly after the 2020 election and Senate runoff. 

“We knew that what we’re seeing right now is what that bill was pretty much created to do,” Greer said. “The lines you’re seeing right now are not a good sign. A form of voter suppression.”

Just as they did two years before, Georgians are turning out to decide an open Senate seat in a runoff election after no clear winner emerged in the contest between Republican Herschel Walker and Democrat Raphael Warnock, the incumbent Senator. Control of the Senate is not at stake this time, but Democrats are looking to expand their majority.

But unlike the 2020 election, where the runoff period lasted nearly two months, this cycle there’s approximately four weeks with only five days of mandated early voting. Republicans tightened the runoff election period with a provision in SB 202 last year, a move that advocates at the time worried would make voter turnout more difficult.

The bill, signed into law by Governor Brian Kemp in 2021 with support from Raffensperger and other Georgia Republicans, created myriad new obstacles for people who want to take part in the runoff. It has meant, for one, that people could not register to vote after Nov. 8 because there isn’t enough time for them to get on the voter rolls, unlike in the run-up to the 2021 runoffs. 

It also shortens the window to vote by mail, a procedure that Democrats have rushed toward since the pandemic; voters had less time to request a mail-in ballot (that deadline was Nov. 25) and must mail it back by the deadline of runoff Election Day. It also limited the use of secure absentee ballot drop boxes to only during the early voting period. Ballot drop-off was further restricted to the times early voting polling stations are open, versus 24-hour availability in 2020. 

That change has added pressure on the state’s in-person voting facilities, as already short-staffed polling places have had to simultaneously certify the results of the general election and prepare for the runoff election. Capacity has been a factor in the serpentine lines voters have had to contend with. 

Most contentiously, the shorter window threatened the viability of weekend voting. Raffensperger’s office originally interpreted the law to prohibit early voting on Saturday, Nov. 26, due to an existing law saying that voting cannot be held immediately following a state holiday. A lawsuit filed before Thanksgiving challenged Raffensperger’s determination, leading upwards of 22 out of 159 counties to open locations for Saturday voting. 

All of these restrictions have impacted students home for the holidays and full-time workers unable to wait in line during the week, for whom the importance of weekend voting—along with these other alternative methods of voting—cannot be stressed nearly enough. 

During a press briefing, Vasu Abhiraman, senior policy counsel at the ACLU of Georgia, spoke about the challenges the tight timeline and confusion around Saturday voting caused for many voters, including students. 

“We had short lines on Election Day two years ago, for both the general election and the runoff, because there were robust early voting opportunities and opportunities to vote by mail,” Abhiraman said. “What do we see here for the runoff? Well, we see absentee by mail, nearly an impossible proposition. We have been contacted by so many out-of-state students who are worried about voting absentee by mail.” 

Abhiraman said he waited an hour and 45 minutes to vote at a library in DeKalb County in metro Atlanta. 

Besides the confluence of issues during this runoff that stems from SB 202, Raffensperger’s actions as secretary of state have fueled challenges. Raffensperger gained national attention for opposing then-President Donald Trump’s subversion effort in 2020, but he then channeled that reputation to defend the GOP’s changes to voting laws. 

“The cries of ‘voter suppression’ from those on the left ring as hollow as the continuously debunked claims of ‘mass voter fraud’ in Georgia’s 2020 election,” he said in 2021.

But Raffensperger has a history of fanning the flames of suspicions about election integrity; in the 2020 primary he created a criminal task force to investigate alleged absentee ballot fraud after mailing all eligible Georgia voters an absentee ballot application. (Nearly two years later, the group’s investigation found virtually no fraud.) After the general election, Raffensperger created a process with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to conduct a signature audit of absentee ballots in Cobb County, something he previously had indicated was not possible. 

In the run-up to the runoff, he issued guidance claiming the provision of Saturday voting after a holiday ahead of the Dec. 6 runoff was prohibited by a state statute, even though he had not challenged Saturday voting after a holiday ahead of the Jan. 5, 2021, runoff. Even after Saturday voting was allowed to proceed, Raffensperger’s office signaled to the state legislature it should address “the confusion.” That could result in an outright ban on Saturday voting in future runoffs. Georgia Republicans retained control of the state government on Nov. 8, so they have the ability to further restrict voting laws in their next legislative session. 

Meanwhile, students like Madeline Berns are already experiencing challenges trying to vote. Berns told Bolts that she lives an hour south of where she currently attends school. Planning to vote in the 2022 general election, Berns said she applied for an absentee ballot on Sept. 23. She said the ballot was issued on Oct. 11 but never received it. 

“On Election Day, I had to skip school and leave a medical appointment early to vote at my assigned polling place,” Berns said. “It took about three hours out of my day and 80 miles worth of gas. The poll workers hadn’t filed a provisional ballot before, so they were confused. We got it worked out, though.”

​​Reflecting on the 2020 election, Berns said she voted absentee without issue. With the tight turnaround for the runoff election, she planned to drive home on Election Day.  

“I don’t want to risk that again, so I didn’t apply for another absentee ballot,” she said. “My county didn’t have early voting when I was home for Thanksgiving. It’s unfortunate because I’ll be in the middle of finals season, but I think it’s important.”

Voting rights advocates and engagement organizers say the secretary of state should have done more to ensure voters had the best information available about polling locations and voting options. County election boards, which in the 2020 election took advantage of donations from voting-focused non-profit organizations such as the Center for Tech and Civic Life to fund election administration, were banned from directly receiving such funding under SB 202. The secretary of state’s office has the power to step up its assistance, but so far has not, leaving non-profit organizations to stand in the gap.

During a press briefing at the start of early voting, Stephanie Ali, policy director at the New Georgia Project, said the coalition reached out to officials in each of the state’s 159 counties to get the correct information out to voters. According to Ali, the secretary of state’s site had little to no information going into the weekend early voting. 

“We did the legwork,” said Ali. “This is work that shouldn’t have to be done by nonprofit organizations. It shouldn’t have to be done by political entities. It should be done by our counties, especially our Secretary of State.”

Greer said that some polling locations around the state needed more workers on site, resulting in long lines during early voting. She attributed the poll worker shortage partly to the increased attacks on poll workers in the aftermath of the 2020 election. 

“You have this bottleneck happening in these lines because there’s only two people working or something like that,” she said. “There’s no incentive to hire new poll workers. And also make them feel safe.”

The various accounts of workers being doxxed, harassed and threatened created a chilling effect for some who might otherwise sign up. Greer also said proper training was an issue. 

“We’re still evolving with these voting machines, and so if something goes down, there’s just not enough adequate training for that person to reboot it,” she said. “The line literally stops. Nothing’s happening until that gets fixed.”

Greer said the voter protection coalition would continue fighting for improvements in election administration and expanding ballot access. Georgia voters have remained resilient and continued to vote regardless of wait times and tight deadlines, right up through the final hours of early voting.

Berns believes schools could do more to help students engage in the electoral process, like having Election Day as a school holiday.

“I don’t even think it’s an excused absence here,” she said. “It would be better, though, to just make sure absentee ballots are approved, sent, and received in a timely fashion.”

Joanna Louis-Ugbo, a student at Emory University and organizer with the Georgia Youth Justice Coalition, echoed the importance of making voting accessible for students. 

“We had to fight to keep our precinct on campus because a lot of these students do not have cars or transportation to go to a precinct that will be a little bit further out,” Louis-Ugbo said. “It’s very important to have precincts on these campuses.”

The post Long Lines, Short Windows: How Georgia’s New Restrictive Voting Law Complicates the Senate Runoff appeared first on Bolts.