It was an impressive display of American democracy.
In 2020, in the middle of a pandemic,
a record-breaking 159 million people voted in the US presidential election
and their choice was clear.
Americans voted for democrats around the country.
But republican leaders saw something else in this chart.
In Wisconsin, they lost by just 21,000 votes.
In Arizona, they lost by just 10,000 votes.
And in Georgia, they lost by just 12,000 votes.
If you count the illegal votes, they can try to steal the election from us.
39% of Americans believe the election that just occurred, 'was rigged'.
And they have major, major concerns about the integrity, the fairness of this election ...
They argue that the results were tainted by fraud.
They said people who shouldn't be allowed to vote were able to
cast votes and republicans said that that fraud happened to come from heavily democratic areas.
And that Donald Trump would have won reelection if we threw out those democratic votes.
And now, just months after the election, that's exactly what republicans are trying to do.
Mr Chairman, members of the committee, I appreciate y'all let me come speak
with you today about house bill 531.
This is Georgia state representative Barry Fleming.
He spearheaded the effort to revamp voting laws in the state and he said it was to make elections
more secure.
It's designed to bring back the confidence of our voters into our election system.
But if we look closer, Fleming's proposals were actually designed to make it harder for people
to vote, especially people who are more likely to vote for democrats.
For example, in the past, Georgia voters could verify their identity on their mail and ballot
with a signature and even though state
officials said repeatedly that there is no mail-in ballot fraud, lawmakers wanted to change it to
require voters to show an ID with their mail-in ballot.
This means it'll be harder for people
of colour to vote because they're more likely to lack a driver's license or passport.
It also means it'll be harder for younger people to vote
because they're also more likely to lack those forms of ID.
Fleming also didn't like that in Georgia, if an eligible voter shows up in the wrong precinct,
they can still vote in the non-local races that they would otherwise be eligible to vote in.
Like, president, governor and senator.
This is called a provisional ballot but Fleming's bill rejects
all of these provisional ballots with a small exception for voters who show up at the wrong
precinct in the final hours of election day
and guess who's more likely to cast provisional ballots?
Yep, democrats.
Fleming's initial bill also cut the number of days people can vote on
the weekend, often the only time some people would get off work to vote.
Of the people who voted early in Georgia in 2020,
it was people of colour who were more likely to do so on the weekend.
Voting rights advocates pushed back and it was eventually removed from the bill.
But the rest of the bill was signed into law.
Republicans in Georgia managed to make voting harder for their political opponents.
But it's not just Georgia.
Republicans are trying to pass laws that make it harder to vote everywhere.
From Arizona to Texas to Florida.
It's important to understand that these aren't just partisan squabbles.
This isn't politics as usual.
This is a tipping point for America.
That's why in Congress, democrats have introduced a bill to get more Americans registered to vote
and give them more ways to vote.
Their ultimate goal is to fortify democracy in America
but outside the limelight of DC, state legislators are proposing restrictive voting bills
and republicans have the power to pass these bills in most of these states.
If enacted, these proposals threaten the idea
that the people should choose who represents them.
They further cement the new norm that in America,
lawmakers are allowed to suppress the vote of their political opponents.
That they're allowed to rig the system in their favour.
If enacted, Americans will have to ask themselves a very serious question:
are we still a democracy?