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Over the past month or so,
we've been covering the literally
hundreds of voter suppression bills
that have been working
their way through a number
of different state legislatures.
Well, now several of them have
actually passed,
including most recently in Georgia,
which had one of the worst.
And why wouldn't it?
They had a lot of voting and
participation last election,
so can't have that.
The Republican Governor Brian Kemp
on Thursday signed into law
a sweeping voting measure that will
do a lot of things.
Now, if you've been watching this,
you already know,
the show for a while,
you already know all of this.
But it imposes new
identification requirements for
those casting ballots by mail.
Curtails the use of drop boxes for
absentee ballots.
Allows electors to challenge
the eligibility of an unlimited
number of voters, and
requires counties to hold hearings
on such challenges within 10 days.
Makes it a crime for third-party
groups to hand out food and
water to voters standing in line,
which is the most specifically,
needlessly cruel thing I've ever
seen in any piece of legislation.
Not just voting legislation.
You are giving up the game when you
target snacks.
But anyway.
>> [LAUGH] John is not having it.
They came for the water, and
I said nothing.
But then they came for
the snacks, and there was no one
there to defend the snackers.
>> You can't say it's about
election security when you're like,
no, make them go thirsty.
That has nothing to do.
It's not like,
I would rig the election, but
I'm too weak from lack of carbs,
now I can't.
Mission accomplished,
that's not how it works.
They're just trying to stop people
from voting.
They want to make the lines really
long, and they want to make
the people quit the lines because
they're thirsty or hungry,
it's madness.
But it also blocks the use of
mobile voting vans,
as Fulton County did last year,
after purchasing two vehicles at
a cost of more than $700,000.
The reason they want to ban those
is because voting vans are
convenient and lead to more voting.
They also prevent local
governments from directly accepting
grants from the private sector.
Now, that's all stuff that we've
talked about.
I want to briefly add in a little
bit that I'm not 100% sure we have
talked about, and
is perhaps even more insidious.
Because of a sort of umbrella
effect it'll have over
the implementation and
enforcement of all
of what we've already talked about.
The 95-page law also strips
authority from the secretary of
state, making him a nonvoting
member of the State Election Board,
and allows lawmakers to initiate
takeovers of local election boards.
Measures that critics said could
allow partisan appointments to slow
down or block election
certification or target
heavily Democratic jurisdiction.
We just went through this
whole election.
We know all of what happened with
Raffensperger and all of that.
Now they're like, yeah,
that was inconvenient.
Made it harder to steal
the election, so he's gone.
Also, we're in charge now, it
doesn't matter if this is an area
that's overwhelmingly Democratic.
We, the state legislature get to
decide what actually happens there.
So this is going to be really fun
for future elections, Brett.
>> Yeah, so
essentially, they've just told us
what is too ridiculous for
them to do.
They're like, Raffensperger
basically said, listen, I'm
the secretary of state of Georgia.
I know how to suppress the vote.
I know, and I did it in a way that
was very successful for
many, many years.
And the only thing that could
devastate my voter suppression
laws is the pandemic, and people
basically coming to the realization
that, my god, you can only vote for
five hours on a Tuesday.
That's ridiculous.
So we had other ways that we drove
people out there to go vote.
Ways that, if they're illegal in
Georgia, that's only because
the Republicans in Georgia realize
that that helps give them an edge.
Because, when they ratified
the Constitution, black people
were only responsible for
three-fifths of a person and
they couldn't even vote.
They're trying to be like, so
what tricks did we use back in
the day that kept these folks from
actually expressing democracy?
And so they're just trotting
those out and shoring those up.
So all the things that, when
Raffensperger said like, listen,
I's get sued and lose a court case
if I actually pursued these things
Trump wants me to pursue.
He's just saying, that was it.
It was just the court case problem.
Let's change the law, and
not just Raffensperger, but their
legislation specifically said, got
it, heard you, cool dog whistle.
We're going to fix all those laws
so that we win the court case
next time.
>> Well, yes, and
totally right about Raffensperger.
I want to focus briefly on Kemp,
because he's the one who's actually
signing this.
So it passed party line vote,
totally cool.
By the way, all the Republicans
across the country are saying HR1
would make elections unacceptable
or whatever, while they're all
trying to pass insane legislation.
But so Kemp signed it,
saying in a news conference, quote,
Georgia will take another step
towards ensuring our elections
are secure, accessible and fair.
Which sounds good, right?
I mean, if you don't know what's
going on, you think, good.
Now he wants secure elections.
We just went through a three-month
period where Brian Kemp
was the target of how much ire from
Donald Trump and
other Republicans about how he
wasn't overthrowing the election.
And he kept saying,
there's nothing I can do.
And there's nothing,
what would I do?
We had a secure election.
He said that over, and over, and
over again.
If he could have overthrown it,
he would have.
Dude does not care about democracy.
Research how he got into office in
the first place.
But there was nothing they could
do because it was a fair and
secure election.
But now, well, now we'll be getting
a fair and secure election,
once we stop some of these people
of particular sorts from voting.
So incredibly fake,
incredibly frustrating.
There's some nice symbolism
here though.
As they pass this incredibly racist
voter suppression bill, many people
have noted the nice symbolism of,
you could see here, his tweet,
of how happy he is that they
signed it.
He's under a portrait of
Callaway Plantation, which,
when you're going to have a a white
Republican governor try to stop
black people from voting,
why not have him appear
under a portrait of a plantation?
That sort of works.
>> It's so crazy, and
it's worth noting that, yes,
I talked about current secretary of
state Brad Raffensperger making
certain decisions.
But then we transition to former
Secretary of State of Georgia,
Brian Kemp, who basically paved his
way to the governorship and
positive sentiment from Republican
voters and
legislators by doing these exact
kind of voter suppression rules.
That's it,
and they're never being honest when
they say they want people to vote.
I think, as Cenk pointed out
yesterday on the show,
they've started saying like,
don't mention democracy.
Democracy, Republicans,
when you say, we want democracy,
they now are saying, no,
we want a republic.
Basically saying they want
the equivalent of Jim Crow,
which this is.
Which Biden called them out for
yesterday, and
other people have as well.
But Fox and Friends is like,
isn't it weird how he said Crow?
>> Exactly, and
we're going to play that, so
we will get to that
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