What are Georgia’s new voting rules? Yahoo News Explains

On Thursday, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed into law a controversial set of rules that change the way elections are run in the state. Critics say that these laws, which were passed in the Republican-controlled state Legislature, are a clear attempt to restrict access to voting. They are also seen by many as a direct response to the record high turnout in the 2020 general election, which led to historic wins for Democrats. Yahoo News explains what the new rules are and how they may affect future elections.

Video transcript

SAM MATTHEWS: Georgia Governor Brian Kemp has signed into law a new set of rules that changed the way elections are run in the state. These new voting laws were passed in the Republican controlled Georgia State legislature, and critics say, they are a direct response from a high Democratic turnout in the 2020 general election.

STACEY ABRAMS: These are revenge bills. It's revenge against losing an election, and that is not right.

JOE BIDEN: This is nothing, but punitive, designed to keep people from voting.

- It's anti-democratic. It's un-American.

- And the rush to pass these laws does raise concerns.

- Now, while the Republican governor was holding a press conference after the signing, Democrat Park Cannon knocked on his door in the state capital to demand transparency and was then handcuffed and arrested. You see it right there.

- So let's break down what these new rules actually do. First, absentee ballots. This was a big deal in the 2020 election. Because of the COVID-19, pandemic lots of people, understandably, chose to vote by mail instead of in-person.

It's also the main reason why, on November 3, it looked like President Trump was ahead in the vote count. But once the absentee ballots started getting counted in the days that followed, Joe Biden pulled ahead and ultimately won. The new rules changed the way absentee ballots work.

Instead of using signature match, they'll now be verified with driver's license numbers in other official documents. This affects people who don't drive or might not have access to some of the pre-approved documentation. They're also changing the deadline to apply for an absentee ballot to 11 days before an election, and going forward, voters will only be allowed to return them by mail or to drop boxes that are placed inside early voting locations and only accessible during business hours.

This rule makes it harder to get and to return absentee ballots, especially for people whose jobs do not allow them to take time off during the day to vote. Another set of big changes are related to early in-person voting. Weekend voting is actually expanded statewide to a minimum of two Saturdays before the general election, but runoffs, which happen pretty frequently in Georgia, are now going to take place just four weeks after the general. And we'll have just one week of early voting standard.

Now, individual counties are allowed to expand early voting beyond those minimums. However, the state election board can now choose to replace county election boards with an interim election manager of their choosing. We don't really know how this is going to play out quite yet, but it does open the door to a scenario in which a state board controlled by one party decides to take over elections in a county that typically votes for the other.

The final pieces of this legislation deal with what happens on election day, how votes are counted, and how the state oversees the election process. We've all seen videos of long lines at the polls, which can take hours and hours to get through. The new rules make it illegal for members of the public to offer people in line food or water, while they wait.

This doesn't inherently benefit one party over the other, but it does make it more likely that people might just give up before it's their turn to vote. Also, going forward, once polls have closed, election workers will no longer be able to stop counting, until they're done. That means they'll have to work 24 hours a day possibly for a few days in a row.

The time for counties to certify the vote has also been reduced from 10 raised to six days, making it harder to verify, and count each ballot, and resolve any disputes. Speaking of disputes, the State Attorney General's Office will now have a hotline for people to report illegal election activity. This all comes as the Senate is debating House Resolution One, a voting rights bill that could potentially supersede these restrictions at the federal level. But if that isn't passed, we could see more restrictions like these. There are more than 40 other states considering similar laws.