Why Georgia’s Voting Legal guidelines Are Not Like Colorado’s

After Main League Baseball introduced not too long ago that it will transfer the All-Star Sport from Atlanta to Denver in protest of latest voting restrictions in Georgia, quite a few outstanding Republicans accused it of hypocrisy.

“Georgia has 17 days of in-person early voting, together with two optionally available Sundays; Colorado has 15,” Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia instructed Fox Information. “So what I’m being instructed, additionally they have a photograph ID requirement. So it doesn’t make an entire lot of sense to me.”

Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina made an identical argument in a widely circulated post on Twitter.

However whereas the 15-day and 17-day numbers are correct, the general comparability isn’t. Listed below are 4 key variations between Colorado’s and Georgia’s techniques.

• In Colorado, each registered voter receives a mail poll by default.

  In Georgia, individuals who need to vote by mail should apply, and the brand new regulation greater than halves the time they’ve to try this: Beforehand, they may apply as a lot as 180 days earlier than an election, however now not more than 78 days earlier than. Georgia additionally forbids officers to ship voters an absentee poll utility until they request it.

• In Colorado, when residents apply for a driver’s license, they’re robotically registered to vote. And in the event that they aren’t registered by way of that course of, they’ll register individually anytime, together with on Election Day.

  In Georgia, all potential voters should full a registration kind, and the deadline is a month earlier than Election Day.

• In Colorado, solely newly registered voters have to supply identification with their mail-in poll; for subsequent elections, all that’s required is their signature. And opposite to Mr. Kemp’s assertion, there isn’t any picture requirement: Voters can use a start certificates, a naturalization doc, a Medicare or Medicaid card, a utility invoice, a financial institution assertion, a paycheck or one other authorities doc that exhibits their title and deal with.

  In Georgia, solely picture identification is appropriate for normal mail-in ballots, and it needs to be one among six particular sorts. The requirement will apply to everybody who votes by mail, not simply to newly registered voters as in Colorado.

• In Colorado, there have been 368 poll drop packing containers final yr throughout the state’s 64 counties, not simply in authorities buildings but additionally at colleges, parks, libraries, companies and extra. Packing containers had been open 24 hours a day.

  In Georgia, the brand new regulation requires not less than one drop field in every of the 159 counties. (Mr. Kemp and different officers notice that earlier than the pandemic, Georgia didn’t have drop packing containers in any respect.) The packing containers can be solely at registrars’ and absentee poll clerks’ workplaces or inside early-voting websites, and open throughout restricted hours.

In 2020, Colorado had the second-highest turnout charge within the nation: 76.4 % of eligible voters, behind solely Minnesota, based on information compiled by the USA Elections Venture. Georgia was twenty sixth, with a turnout charge of 67.7 % of eligible voters.