 As we all remember, in the last election cycle, Republicans lost in the state of Georgia, which usually doesn't happen. The state flipped from red to blue, and this is largely due to a surge in voter turnout. This proportionally, black Georgians came out and they supported Democrats. So in response, the Republican Party that is currently in control of Georgia decided to make sure that this never happens again, that the change from red to blue isn't actually permanent. So they concocted a plan to suppress the vote. And that plan has now come to fruition, and it is bill SB202. And it is one of the most draconian pieces of voter suppression that we've seen for decades. In fact, it's so bad it's being called Jim Crow 2.0, because that's exactly what the goal is to suppress the vote of black voters, specifically black voters. So as Vox explains, the bill, known as SB202, gives state-level officials the authority to usurp the powers of county election boards, allowing the Republican-dominated state government to potentially disqualify voters in Democratic-leaning areas. It criminalizes the provision of food and water to voters waiting in line in a state where lines are notoriously long and heavily non-white precincts. It requires ID for absentee ballots, and limits the placement of ballot dropboxes. SB202 will almost certainly make elections less fair, giving the GOP a structural advantage well outsized to its actual strength among Georgia voters. It doesn't signal the end of democracy in Georgia, but it is the latest significant step in the Republican Party's move toward becoming an anti-democratic political faction. The Georgia law is part of a broader wave of GOP efforts at the state and national level to undermine the fairness of American elections. What happened in Georgia reveals the true force of the modern Republican Party, a far-right institution that threatens American democracy even after Trump's defeat. Now it's been a couple of days since the governor of Georgia, Brian Kemp, signed this into law, and already there are calls for boycotts. The state is being sued over this law. The issue is that the conservatives currently have a very comfortable majority, so if this reaches the Supreme Court, then what's going to happen? Well, I mean, even if Roberts decides to deflect inside with the liberals on the court, they can still uphold this draconian voter suppression law by five to four. So this isn't just something that could affect Georgia. This could affect a lot of other states as well. Georgia in fact is just a microcosm of the broader issue because states and legislatures across the country are currently seeing bills just like this. It's just that Georgia is the most brazen and shameless. And the governor is really angry that folks are saying this is like Jim Crow 2.0 and that this is racist. But funny, for how worried he is about this looking racist and people saying it's racist, he sure seems really defensive and for actually not wanting it to be racist, perhaps he should have thought about the optics a little bit more. This is the picture the governor tweeted showing him signing the bill, surrounded by six white men. A picture that presumably was not intended to invoke Jim Crow in a state where about 30% of the population is black and one party, the Republican Party, is nearly entirely white. And the backdrop there is really the PSD resistance that also definitively should not evoke bad memories of the old self. That painting there in the background, that is of a slave plantation in Wilkes County, Georgia, where at least 100 slaves owned by the Callaway family were forced to toil over 56 acres of land. Yeah. Now, while that photograph was being taken outside, this was happening. The governor is signing a bill that affects all Georgians. Why is he doing it in private? And why is he trying to keep elected officials who are representing us out of the process? Exactly. You said you gave her one more time, like you're going to do something. Are you serious? No, you are not representing. No, she's not under arrest. What? For what? Under arrest? For what? For trying to see something that our governor is doing? Our governor is signing a bill that affects all Georgians and you're going to arrest an elected representative. Why does the governor have more power than a representative? Why are you arresting her? That's what I'm asking. Why are you arresting her? Stop arresting her. Why are you arresting her? Why? Sight the violation. Sight the code. What is she in violation of? I want you to cite the code. Sight the code. Sight it. Sight the code. Sight the code. Sight the code. Why are you arresting her? Under what? Under what? That is a state lawmaker who you kept out from the process and she now faces felony charges. Not racist though, just ridiculous. Now in an interview with Fox News, which by the way had a little to no pushback, the governor tried to explain this bill and he made it seem as if it's really not that bad. In fact, this bill expands voting rights in some ways and liberals just don't want to talk about that. Almost everything he said here is either disingenuous or an outright lie. Take a look. Governor, your critics say and President Biden calling it Jim Crow 2.0, specifically the heaviest criticism is that this new law limits voting access to African Americans specifically. What do you say to that? Well I can truthfully look in the camera and ask my African American friends and other African Americans in Georgia to simply find out what's in the bill versus just the blank statement of this is Jim Crow or this is voter suppression or this is racist because it is not. It expands early voting in Georgia. It also further secures the ballot with the photo ID requirement and I would urge them to do just that and ask themselves who's being truthful to you here? Is it the governor and the legislature that just voted on this bill or is it you know a lot of these third party groups that are making millions off of putting this false narrative out there or the president that obviously doesn't know what his own voting laws are in his own state? Governor for our viewers maybe just hearing this story seeing the two sides of this What is in this bill that people need to know about? What is most important? Well obviously we talked about the access side of things. There's now going to be two mandatory Saturdays. You can have the option if counties want to to vote on two potential Sundays which that is adding access. We're adding the photo ID requirement to absentee ballots by mail. We already have that requirement in our law when you go vote in person before the last election you know 95% average 95% of the people voted in person so people are used to using the ID to vote in Georgia so it's not a big deal like people are making it out and if you don't have ID we'll give you one for free you know we're addressing the drop box situation you know the left and the the outrageous people that are making money off this are claiming that we're taking away the potential to use a drop box that was never in the law grift it's never been in the state law in Georgia we did that with this bill we're just going to make sure it's a secure process and that those drops boxes are monitored and this whole ridiculous statement about water you can get water if you're standing in line your county can provide a drink cooler for you to get water but the real question is people that are outraged about that they should be asking why am I standing in line that long to start with this bill addresses that with the number of machines that should be at every precinct based on the percent of population that's going to be voting in that precinct to help speed up the election people should be outraged in these democratic democratic run counties that they're having to stand in line for two or three hours here in the state of Georgia that is not the norm around the state I wonder why it is that in democratic leaning areas the lines are longer that couldn't have anything to do with the fact that you reduced the number of polling stations in these areas because these happen to be the areas with a higher share of black voters right that doesn't have anything to do with it now it's because democrats are controlling these areas and democrats are bad it's not because we reduce the number of polling stations and you know you'd think based on what he said there that he's cognizant of the fact that the lines are too long and perhaps this bill will address it even says that the bill addresses the long lines with the number of machines that should be at every precinct based on the percent of the population that's going to be voting in that precinct to help speed up the election he says this so you think oh wow so you're adding more polling stations right well actually no the bill doesn't add more polling stations in fact the bill will contribute to longer lines because you're taking away the number of drop boxes that exist so the lines are literally going to be longer as a result of this bill and you just happen for no particular reason to throw in this little clause that criminalizes people who try to encourage folks who are waiting in line to stay there by bringing them pizza and soda and water so he knows exactly what he's doing but he's trying to piss on our legs and tell us that it's raining now this doesn't actually increase voter suppression this is gonna expand voting rights and he keeps citing the detail about how well you know this actually does expand early voting now he's correct there but it's funny how you throw that in there so you can try to sell it to us so you have plausible deniability but it doesn't matter because the overall net effect of this bill is to stop people from voting and he tries to compare Delaware to Georgia and first of all this is irrelevant because even if Delaware has terrible laws that doesn't mean that you should also adopt terrible laws and he tries to basically hypocrisy burn Joe Biden and and say well you know Joe Biden he is attacking my law but he should pay attention to his state that's irrelevant he's the president of the United States he's not the governor of Georgia and he's very narrowly defining what voting rights means when this is disingenuous so let's look at voting laws in states there's a number of dimensions that we need to pay attention to keep in mind this is before they passed this new law so when it comes to early voting it is true that Delaware requires an approved excuse whereas Georgia does not so they do get kudos there when it comes to felony disenfranchisement the states are pretty comparable although in Delaware they don't restore voting rights to all felons if you were convicted of murder or rape you don't get your voting rights back so when it comes to voter registration laws though a little bit different story Georgia is one of the strictest in the nation and they actually have an exact match law so if you try to register to vote it gets rejected if your state records don't match 100% so if you just moved and you forgot to change your address or didn't have a chance to you cannot register to vote everything has to match that's not the case in Delaware when it comes to voter ID laws again Georgia is one of the most strictest in the nation oh but in this one area we expand early voting great it's almost like you're using that as an excuse to sell a bill that is basically a draconian voter suppression bill and then he lies about voting rights activists he says well they say that there's all this stuff in the bill when in actuality you just got to read the bill what they're saying is in it isn't actually in it but what he's leaving out is that the bill in this iteration the one that was signed into law even though it's super draconian is less draconian than it was because he was forced to concede on a number of things because the bill was too brazen as the new york times explains the law does not include some of the harshest restrictions that had been proposed like a ban on sunday voting that was seen as an attempt to curtail the role of black churches in driving turnout and the legislation now in fact expands early voting options in some areas no excuse absentee voting in which voters do not have to provide a rationale for casting about by mail also remains in place the what will now entail new restrictions such as providing a state issued identification card so basically what he's saying is look we were going to pass this super super draconian version of it but we didn't we only passed the last draconian version of it that's still draconian that still amounts to jim pro jim pro 2.0 but uh we should get credit for that right and hey we threw in an expansion of early voting we're making it more difficult to register to vote in the first place but if you manage to register to vote you can vote earlier yay i mean this is just it's it's insane and again i have to point out that georgia is a microcosm of a broader issue because in state legislatures across the country controlled by republicans they're doing this exact thing so the only way this is going to be stopped is if democrats pass hr1 at the federal level because you have to blunt this momentum in these state legislatures across the country because republicans where they're in control they're going to restrict voting so they are able to maintain power they don't care that they're killing democracy and they know that the supreme court will likely be on their side here because the supreme court is a political institution they don't care about the constitution so if republicans pass these voter suppression laws they're not going to do jack shit they'll uphold them so they know right now that they have to do this and they know that democrats likely aren't competent enough to actually pass hr1 and as a result the net effect will be that republicans will be victorious in stopping black people from voting which doesn't just hurt the democratic party which doesn't just make it less likely that we see states flip from red to blue as we did you know in january with rafael warnak and john asif but it hurts democracy in general because if you actually want a thriving democracy you have to expand suffrage to everyone not make it more difficult to vote so this is a very very bad sign it's the start and more will come if democrats don't take action in congress this is a serious threat to democracy and they need to actually treat it as if that's the case because it is