As the Grand Old Party (GOP) pursue what many experts and observers argue to be assaults on voting rights they are also passing voter security laws that according to Lawrence Norden and Gowri Ramachandran in an article in Brennan Center for Justice instead make voting less secure. Here is an excerpt:

When Gov. Brian Kemp signed Georgia’s new restrictive voting provisions into law, he claimed the controversial changes—including making it harder to request mail ballots and use drop boxes—are necessary to improve election security. These bills, of course, spring from the Big Lie about our elections, but there is another irony here. Much of the “election integrity” legislation in Georgia and around the country would actually weaken our election systems and reduce their capacity to recover from a technological problem, whether a malfunction or an attack.

During the 2020 election, the increased variety in voting methods and the longer time frame for voting meant that, in many states, election officials were handling smaller groups of voters and ballots at once than they were in past elections. If a technological problem arose, the reduced crowds made it easier to diagnose and solve the problem and get voters voting again.

For example, during early voting in 2020, Georgia’s statewide voter registration database was having trouble handling the logins of election staff across the state. The problem caused extremely long lines. Georgia officials weren’t able to fix it immediately, but within a few days the issue was addressed, lines improved, and voters who might have not been able to stand in long lines because of work or other obligations still had opportunities to cast their ballot. If there had only been one or two days for in-person voting, those voters might not have had another chance. And the lines would have been even longer, with many more voters showing up to cast their ballot at once.

Read the full article here.