'Five-alarm fire for democracy': New GA rules could block election results in key states

New voting rules in key battleground states could impact the 2024 election results. In Georgia, Democrats are suing to halt a set of Trump-backed election rules which Democrats say could be used to block certification of election results if they win in November. “It appears that Georgia Republicans are laying the groundwork not to certify the presidential election if Kamala Harris wins,” explains Ari Berman, who is the voting rights correspondent for Mother Jones magazine. Berman also discusses Tim Walz and JD Vance’s voting rights records and a recent voting rights law out of Arizona that requires new voters to prove their U.S. citizenship.

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, “War, Peace and the Presidency.” I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

We look now at how voting rules in key battleground states could impact the November election results, especially in Georgia, where the laws are Republican-led and backed by former President Trump, who is now running for reelection.

This week, the Democratic National Committee and the Georgia Democratic Party sued to halt Georgia’s new election rules, which they say could be used to block certification of election results if Democrats win in November. The new rules, passed by the Georgia State Election Board, allow election officials to conduct a, quote, “reasonable inquiry” before certifying election results and to investigate ballot counts. At a campaign rally earlier this month, Trump praised the Georgia State Election Board’s MAGA-aligned majority.

DONALD TRUMP: I don’t know if you’ve heard, but the Georgia State Election Board is in a very positive way. This is a very positive thing, Marjorie. They’re on fire. They’re doing a great job. Three members — Janice Johnson, Rick Jeffares and Janelle King — three people, are all pit bulls fighting for honesty, transparency and victory.

AMY GOODMAN: For more, we’re joined by journalist Ari Berman, voting rights correspondent for Mother Jones, who called this a, quote, “5 alarm fire for democracy in Georgia.”

Ari, welcome back to Democracy Now! Explain, first of all, who he’s praising there and exactly what Georgia has done.

ARI BERMAN: Good morning, Amy. Good morning, Juan. Thank you for having me back on the show.

So, Trump is praising three members of this State Board of Election in Georgia who were appointed by Republicans, by the Republican Party, in the Republican-controlled Georgia Legislature. And they made a series of rule changes earlier this month that are extremely concerning for democracy and voting rights, one saying that counties must undertake a reasonable inquiry before certifying an election, and another saying that counties are entitled to what they call all election-related documentation before certifying an election. I think the goal here is to make certification of an election optional, instead of mandatory, which is how it’s been understood for decades, not just in Georgia but around the country.

And the huge worry here, and why I said this is a five-alarm fire for democracy, is it appears that Georgia Republicans are laying the groundwork not to certify the presidential election if Kamala Harris wins. And they’re doing exactly what Trump wanted them to do in 2020. Trump made Georgia the epicenter of the attempt to try to overturn the election. He asked local and State Board of Elections and election officials not to certify the election. They refused to do so; they followed the law. But it seems like in 2024 they’re going to extraordinary lengths to try to implement the measures that failed in 2020 to try to rig the election for Trump.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Ari, there is also intra-Republican fighting over this rule, isn’t there? Could you talk about the role of Georgia Governor Kemp?

ARI BERMAN: There is intra-Republican fighting, Juan, because, remember, Georgia passed a sweeping voter suppression law in 2021 that made it harder to vote in a lot of different ways. One of the things that law did is it removed the Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who defended the integrity of the 2020 election and refused to find 11,780 votes, as Trump demanded, to overturn Biden’s victory. That law removed Raffensperger from the State Election Board, so he was no longer chair or a voting member of Election Board. Instead, it gave more power to the hyper-gerrymandered Republican Legislature to appoint a majority of board members. And so, the fact that there is this Trump-aligned majority on the State Board of Election in Georgia is a direct result of this voter suppression law that was passed by Republicans.

That said, some Republicans seem to have regrets over what has occurred here. The Secretary of State Raffensperger has criticized these rule changes, saying he doesn’t want 11th-hour changes. Democrats have demanded an ethics inquiry. And in response to that ethics inquiry, Governor Kemp, a Republican, has asked the attorney general of Georgia, another Republican, whether he has the power to remove the Election Board members. So, this isn’t playing well with establishment Republicans, because establishment Republicans were the ones who were purged from the State Board of Election in favor of this MAGA-aligned majority.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And Georgia is not the only battleground over this issue. Could you talk about what is happening in other states, specifically Michigan and Nevada?

ARI BERMAN: Yeah. So, we’ve already seen local election officials in other states, including Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, not certify local election results. We also saw that happen in Georgia, too, in the last presidential primary. And this is so concerning because these state and local election boards have been taken over, in some cases, by election deniers, by MAGA extremists. And what they’re doing is they are trying to institutionalize the insurrection through other means. So, Trump failed to overturn the election results, but in a lot of key battleground states, they didn’t just change the voting laws, they also changed who’s serving on these key state and local boards.

And the administration of elections matters so much because you can cast a vote, you can have your vote counted, but it doesn’t actually matter until votes are certified. We learned that in 2020. Nothing is final until the elections are certified. And we’ve already seen evidence that Republicans are preparing not to certify an election if it doesn’t go their way.

AMY GOODMAN: Ari, you wrote a piece for Mother Jones headlined “Tim Walz Has a Stellar Record on Voting Rights.” Can you talk about what that record is and how it compares, for example, with the vice-presidential running mate of Trump, with JD Vance, who wanted to overturn the November election of 2020?

ARI BERMAN: When he was governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz signed a number of really impactful bills on voting rights. He signed a Minnesota Voting Rights Act, which was meant to restore protections of the Voting Rights Act that were gutted by the Supreme Court. He passed laws making it easier to vote, through things like Election Day registration, preregistration for 16- and 17-year-olds, more early voting, restoring voting rights to 50,000 people with past felony convictions.

And this is a huge contrast to Trump’s vice-presidential nominee, JD Vance, who has basically said he would have used his power to try to overturn the 2020 election if he had been vice president, and has doubled down on election denial. So, you have one vice-presidential candidate in Tim Walz who has used the power of his office to try to expand voting rights, and you have another vice-presidential candidate, JD Vance, who said he would do everything in his power to try to undermine voting rights. And that’s a pretty stark contrast, particularly at a time when voting rights is emerging in Georgia and other states as a central issue in the presidential campaign.

AMY GOODMAN: [inaudible] you about Arizona, Ari. What just happened there around immigrants and voting rights, the right to vote?

ARI BERMAN: There was an emergency Supreme Court case that came before the Supreme Court in Arizona regarding proof of citizenship to register to vote, so having to show things like a passport or birth certificate to be able to register to vote. And the Supreme Court said that voters there have to show this documentation to be able to register to vote and to be able to vote in state elections.

And this is very concerning because this is a last-minute change. We’re in late August right now. Arizona is a vote-by-mail state, so ballots get sent out soon. And there’s a lot of confusion over what documents you need to register to vote. And it’s thrown a lot of the state into confusion, when they don’t just have a competitive presidential election, but they have competitive races for Senate, for state Legislature. They have a lot of prominent ballot initiatives, including a ballot initiative on abortion. There’s lots of important down-ballot races over who’s going to decide control of elections in places like Maricopa County, the largest county in the state.

And the interesting thing is, the Supreme Court has said, “Don’t change voting laws too close to an election.” Well, the Supreme Court just changed voting laws close to an election in a way that it appeared will help Republican candidates try to win the election. So it sets a very disturbing precedent both on the ground but also for voting rights more broadly.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Ari, you know, we just came from the Democratic convention, before that, the Republican convention. All the discussion of the battleground states, that these are the only ones that will determine what happens in November. Someone tweeted something like, ”DEI for white states.” Not all white states, but these are some of the — these include some of the whitest and least populous states. Explain why these states are what determine who is president of the United States, rather than the national popular vote. If you can explain the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact and where it stands now?

ARI BERMAN: Well, the reason why we focus every year on six to eight presidential battleground states is because of the Electoral College. And the Electoral College is fundamentally undemocratic in two different ways. First off, it creates a situation where you can win the Electoral College but lose the popular vote, which just violates basic notions of “one person, one vote.” But it’s also undemocratic in that 80% of Americans have a vote that really doesn’t matter for presidential elections, because they live in states that are either too red or too blue to actually matter. And so, the focus is always on these battleground states that tend to be whiter and more conservative and more Republican than the country as a whole. And whether you live in a redder state like Texas or a bluer state like New York or California, nobody comes to your state to campaign, because you’re not one of these carefully curated battlegrounds. So the Electoral College is both undemocratic and also not reflective of the country writ large.

What the National Popular Vote Compact would do is, if states that reach 270 Electoral College votes sign onto it, which is what you need to win the presidency, therefore, they will assign their states’ electors to the winner of the popular vote. So it’s a way, essentially, to abolish the Electoral College without having to pass a constitutional amendment, which is much tougher to do.

AMY GOODMAN: Ari Berman, we thank you for being with us, author of Minority Rule: The Right-Wing Attack on the Will of the People—and the Fight to Resist It. He’s voting rights correspondent for Mother Jones magazine. We’ll link to your recent piece, ”MAGA Election Deniers Are Going All Out to Rig Georgia for Trump.”

NOW READ: Robert Reich: Trump is a bully, but I'm fighting back