Voter integrity law upheld in Georgia

 Conservative Brief:

A federal judge has upheld several parts of a voter integrity law that was passed in Georgia.

Judge J.P. Boulee of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia upheld the parts of Georgia’s Election Integrity Law challenged by an organization that sends prospective voters prefilled absentee ballot applications.

VoteAmerica sued Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to strike down portions of the bill that added requirements for organizations or individuals that mail prefilled absentee ballot applications to potential voters.

The bill, Georgia SB 202, was signed into law in May 2021 by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp. It includes three provisions that apply additional restrictions to such ballot applications.

Under the law, third-party organizations are prohibited from sending absentee ballot applications prefilled with the prospective voter’s required information. They are also prohibited from sending applications to prospective voters who have already requested an absentee ballot.

Further, the absentee ballot applications must include the following disclaimer printed on the front of the form: “This is NOT an official government publication and was NOT provided to you by any governmental entity and this is NOT a ballot. It is being distributed by [insert name and address of person, organization, or other entity distributing such document or material].”

The court sided with Raffensperger and the RNC, holding that the plaintiff’s First Amendment rights were not violated, and they did not meet the standard to obtain an injunction striking down the law.

“Further, this Court finds that combining speech (in the cover information) with the conduct of sending an application form, as Plaintiffs do here, is not sufficient to transform the act of sending the application forms into protected speech,” the court wrote. “Plaintiffs’ pro-absentee voting message is not necessarily intrinsic to the act of sending prospective voters an application form.”
...

It is pretty clear that the opponents' Jim Crow 2.0 argument was not persuasive to the court.  The law appears to be a reasonable way to contribute to the integrity of elections. 

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