• Home
  • Opinion
  • Quizzes
  • Redistricting
  • Sections
  • About Us
  • Voting
  • Independent Voter News
  • Campaign Finance
  • Civic Ed
  • Directory
  • Election Dissection
  • Events
  • Fact Check
  • Glossary
  • News
  • Analysis
  • Subscriptions
  • Log in
Leveraging Our Differences
  • news & opinion
    • Big Picture
      • Civic Ed
      • Ethics
      • Leadership
      • Leveraging big ideas
      • Media
    • Business & Democracy
      • Corporate Responsibility
      • Impact Investment
      • Innovation & Incubation
      • Small Businesses
      • Stakeholder Capitalism
    • Elections
      • Campaign Finance
      • Independent Voter News
      • Redistricting
      • Voting
    • Government
      • Balance of Power
      • Budgeting
      • Congress
      • Judicial
      • Local
      • State
      • White House
    • Justice
      • Accountability
      • Anti-corruption
      • Budget equity
    • Columns
      • Beyond Right and Left
      • Civic Soul
      • Congress at a Crossroads
      • Cross-Partisan Visions
      • Democracy Pie
      • Our Freedom
  • Pop Culture
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
  • events
  • About
      • Mission
      • Advisory Board
      • Staff
      • Contact Us
Sign Up
  1. Home>
  2. Voting>
  3. voting rights>

Voting rights suits cause budget pain in Georgia, attorney general laments

David Hawkings
January 28, 2020
Stacey Abrams and Brian Kemp

Lawsuits brought by Stacey Abrams, among others, have forced Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp to adjust his budget to providing more funding for the state's legal defense team. Kemp defeated Abrams in 2018.

Pool/Getty Images

Defending against a growing wave of voter suppression lawsuits is starting to put a real pinch on Georgia's budget, the state's top attorney says.

More taxpayer money to hire more lawyers will be needed soon, especially because additional voting rights litigation is anticipated in coming weeks, Attorney General Chris Carr on Monday told fellow Republicans who control the purse strings at the state capital.

The rules governing the state's elections have been set or maintained by the Republicans who have held all levers of power for the past 15 years in the Deep South's most populous state. But since Democrat Stacey Abrams came within a whisper of getting elected the nation's first black female governor in 2018, and blamed restrictive policies for preventing thousands of her supporters from casting ballots, Georgia has become the marquee venue for voting rights challenges nationwide.


"We are currently maximizing our internal capacity with elections lawsuits against the state," Carr told a state House appropriations panel, "and there are more lawsuits coming our way this year and in the future."

GOP Gov. Brian Kemp's budget is asking to take almost $400,000 from the office of the secretary of state, which runs elections, and give it to the attorney general for "legal services to support election security." More than that will ultimately be needed, Carr said, because "the fiscal impact that this litigation will have on the state in the coming months and years is significant."

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

His office has assigned two staff attorneys to work full time defending election lawsuits and five others to help on top of their traditional workloads. But the attorney said hiring private firms for parts of the cases would be required — and at a time when Kemp is working to persuade the General Assembly to cut state spending 4 percent this year and another 6 percent next year.

Abrams and the advocacy group she founded after losing the governor's race, Fair Fight Action, have brought a comprehensive federal lawsuit saying Georgia's system amounts to an unconstitutional series of obstacles that are disproportionately likely to disadvantage African-Americans. It's focused on getting the courts to strike down the state's policies for purging voter rolls, delaying the processing of registration applications, short-staffing polling places in urban and rural precincts, and requiring exact documentation matches (down to the middle initial) for people seeking to cast absentee and provisional ballots.

National Democratic campaign organizations, meanwhile, have challenged the state's high rate of rejection of absentee ballots and its rule assuring the names of Republican candidates always appear first on the ballot.

"Unfortunately, we have to spend a tremendous amount of time and energy dealing with ongoing litigation," GOP Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger testified at another budget hearing.

In addition to mounting defenses in those cases, the state's legal bills also include paying for storage. That's because last year a federal judge ordered Georgia to hang on indefinitely to all the voting equipment that's been used in elections under dispute, although almost all of it has been replaced by more modern technology for 2020. The storage bill alone is about $400,000 a year.

The odds that the state's legal bills will eventually abate are small. Demographic shifts mean Georgia's politics will eventually become increasingly purple — and Democrats are eager to hasten that switch. They are vowing to compete aggressively, and expensively, not only for the state's 16 electoral votes this year but also for both Senate seats. But their chances of upsets are reliant on big turnout from the black communities who maintain their balloting is subject to unfair regulation.

From Your Site Articles
  • Georgia voters petition to challenge new election equipment - The ... ›
  • Democrats sue in Arizona, Texas, Georgia for ballot position - The ... ›
  • Democrats to spend more than $10M suing for voting rights - The ... ›
  • Changing election rules is none of a federal judge’s business, one says - The Fulcrum ›
  • Hours-long waits to vote prompt Georgia lawsuit - The Fulcrum ›
  • Paper voter rolls ordered in Georgia - The Fulcrum ›
  • Georgia will not provide paper backups of voter lists - The Fulcrum ›
  • Vote the Vets seeks election workers in military community - The Fulcrum ›
Related Articles Around the Web
  • Judge rejects effort to derail lawsuit over Georgia election problems. ›
  • Georgia voting irregularities raise more troubling questions about ... ›
  • The lawsuit challenging Georgia's entire elections system, explained ... ›
voting rights

Want to write
for The Fulcrum?

If you have something to say about ways to protect or repair our American democracy, we want to hear from you.

Submit
Get some Leverage Sign up for The Fulcrum Newsletter
Confirm that you are not a bot.
×
Follow

Support Democracy Journalism; Join The Fulcrum

The Fulcrum daily platform is where insiders and outsiders to politics are informed, meet, talk, and act to repair our democracy and make it live and work in our everyday lives. Now more than ever our democracy needs a trustworthy outlet

Contribute
Contributors

Grand Canyon gap in America today

Dave Anderson

Chief Justice John Roberts and Chief Justice Roger Taney are Twins– separated by only 165 years

Stephen E. Herbits

Conservatives attacking Americans’ First Amendment rights

Steve Corbin

To advance racial equity, policy makers must move away from the "Black and Brown" discourse

Julio A. Alicea

Policymakers must address worsening civil unrest post Roe

Sarah K. Burke

Video: How to salvage U.S. democracy from the "tyranny of the minority"

Our Staff
latest News

The American school meal debate: It all comes down to food as market goods or public goods

C.Anne Long
19h

It’s time to retire Calvinism

Debilyn Molineaux
19h

Podcast: On democracy and its current torments

Our Staff
19h

America’s greatest resource- Education

William Natbony
29 September

The Carter Center and Team Democracy unite to advance candidate principles for trusted elections

Ken Powley
29 September

There is no magic pill for postpartum depression

Priya Iyer
28 September
Videos
Video: Expert baffled by Trump contradicting legal team

Video: Expert baffled by Trump contradicting legal team

Our Staff
Video: Do white leaders hinder black aspirations?

Video: Do white leaders hinder black aspirations?

Our Staff
Video: How to prepare for student loan repayments returning

Video: How to prepare for student loan repayments returning

Our Staff
Video: The history of Labor Day

Video: The history of Labor Day

Our Staff
Video: Trump allies begin to flip as prosecutions move forward

Video: Trump allies begin to flip as prosecutions move forward

Our Staff
Video Rewind: Trans-partisan practices and the "superpower of respect"

Video Rewind: Trans-partisan practices and the "superpower of respect"

Our Staff
Podcasts

Podcast: On democracy and its current torments

Our Staff
19h

Podcast: Is reunification still possible?

Our Staff
27 September

Podcast: All politics is local

Our Staff
22 September

Podcast: How states hold fair elections

Our Staff
14 September
Recommended
The American school meal debate: It all comes down to food as market goods or public goods

The American school meal debate: It all comes down to food as market goods or public goods

State
It’s time to retire Calvinism

It’s time to retire Calvinism

Contributors
Podcast: On democracy and its current torments

Podcast: On democracy and its current torments

Podcasts
America’s greatest resource- Education

America’s greatest resource- Education

Big Picture
Grand Canyon gap in America today

Grand Canyon gap in America today

Elections
The Carter Center and Team Democracy unite to advance candidate principles for trusted elections

The Carter Center and Team Democracy unite to advance candidate principles for trusted elections

Big Picture