It was only a few months ago when the 2020 election results were coming in and the controversies of fraud and miscalculation during the election were brought beneath the spotlight. Georgia was at the middle of those controversies because of the extremely tight margin in the battleground state.
President Trump was leading for the entirety of election day and several days that followed until Joe Biden eventually overcame Trump’s vote total and ultimately went on to win the state. President Trump dialed up Georgia’s Secretary of State to try and see if any votes could be thrown out due to fraud. After several days, Georgia eventually went into Joe Biden’s electoral column and he would go on to become the 46th President of the United States.
With a few months behind us now, Georgia Republicans are looking to avoid a similar controversy in the future. They have just had Governor Brian Kemp sign a new voting law to boost security for all of Georgia’s future elections. New identification requirements and early-voting rules are only a couple of the significant changes that are included within the legislation.
After Republicans lost the Presidential election in Georgia, two Senate runoffs also took place on January 5th and the Democratic Senate Candidates narrowly won both seats, featuring Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff.
It’s possible that Republicans could increase their chances of winning future elections by enacting this law in Georgia because it could restrict voting access in several different ways. That’s an important step in the right direction to ensure that no fraudulent ballots are cast to overturn the results of a tight election.
Similar legislation could show up in other states before the 2022 midterm elections, especially if Republicans have enough control in the legislatures to pass it without bipartisan support. That could greatly impact the 2024 Presidential results in Georgia and any other state that adopts this type of legislation.
Georgia voted for the Republican Presidential candidate from 1996 through 2016 and finally switched into the Democratic column with the incredible levels of turnout that became apparent after the rapid expansion of mail-in voting that took place in 2020. This law will likely shift the state of Georgia back into the Republican column in the short-term, but there’s little reason to believe the natural demographic shift in the state will stop shifting towards the Democrats.
States like Texas, Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina are all slowly shifting in demographics and they would become strong democratic-leaning states if new voting laws are not passed. At the same time, states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan are slowly shifting towards the Republicans with the natural shifts of the demographics across the country.
Georgia appears to be leading the way in terms of enacting new voting laws for the upcoming elections in 2022. It will be interesting to see if any other states quickly follow the lead that has been crafted by the Republicans in Georgia.