Ballot drop boxes proliferated in 2020 as the state grappled with conducting an election amid a pandemic, but they became a target of conspiracy theorists. The next year, the General Assembly dramatically limited the hours and locations for the boxes, shutting them down more often in cities with higher Black populations. Rural areas with more white voters gained more drop boxes when the law imposed a one-box-per-county minimum.

Absentee ballot applications from Black voters were rejected for lateness at a higher rate after the law set an earlier deadline to submit an absentee request. While election officials rarely rejected absentee applications submitted too close to Election Day from 2014 to 2018, Black voters’ untimely absentee requests were denied at higher rates than white voters’ in 2020, and the divide further widened in 2022.

And requirements for more voter ID had a greater impact on Black voters, who are much less likely to have driver’s licenses or other forms of photo identification, state records show.

Lawsuits alleging that the law is racially discriminatory, including one filed by the U.S. Department of Justice, are pending in federal court.

“We’re looking at real, serious hurdles and obstacles that are being very intentionally put in the way of Black, brown and young voters,” said Roslyn Satchel, CEO for the New Georgia Project, a liberal voter mobilization organization and one of the plaintiffs. “These laws are biased and inequitable. They were a direct response to the turnout of Black and brown voters in 2020.”

So far, a federal judge overseeing the case has ruled against allegations of discrimination, finding in preliminary decisions that the evidence was insufficient or the impact on Black voters amounted to “small percentage point differences.”

Republicans approved the law, Senate Bill 202, in 2021 in the wake of losing both the presidency and Georgia’s two U.S. Senate seats, but they deny the accusation that it treats any race differently. They say high turnout in the 2022 midterms disproves allegations of voter suppression.

State Senate Majority Leader Steve Gooch, R-Dahlonega, said declines in absentee voting — from 26% of turnout in 2020 to 6% in 2022 — means that more voters chose to vote in person after the pandemic, but they weren’t prevented from casting a ballot.

“The goal is to have more eligible, legal voters participate, regardless of the method they use,” he said. “The fact is SB 202 has withstood judicial scrutiny and made it easier to vote and harder to cheat.”

Universal laws, different results

Public data analyzed by the AJC shows how voting patterns changed in areas addressed by Georgia’s 2021 voting law.

Supporters of the law’s fewer drop boxes, earlier absentee deadlines and mandates for more voter ID cited security concerns about absentee voting in the 2020 election.

Absentee voting among all races surged during the COVID-19 pandemic, amounting to 26% of all votes cast in 2020, including 30% of Black voters and 24% of white voters, absentee ballot reports from the secretary of state’s office show.

After health risks abated and the passage of the voting law, absentee rates fell to about 6% in 2022, with Black and white voters showing a similar decrease.

“What part of SB 202 is more difficult for people who are African American?” said Janelle King, a Republican and the first Black person to serve on the State Election Board in recent years. “We can get ID like everyone else. When it comes to drop boxes, is somehow a Black person going to find it difficult to find the drop box? No, they can find it like everyone else.”

White voters used absentee voting more often than Black voters until 2018. But that flipped during the 2018 election, when Democrat Stacey Abrams ran against Republican Brian Kemp. Since that election, Black absentee voting rates have exceeded those of white voters.

Changes in voting patterns cannot be entirely attributed to changes in laws. A variety of factors — including voter enthusiasm, wealth, education and election laws — impact turnout.

White voters turned out at higher rates than Black, Hispanic and Asian voters in Georgia, both before and after approval of the state’s 2021 voting law.

The plaintiffs in the federal lawsuit argue that voting laws are harder on Black voters because Georgia’s history of discrimination created long-lasting socioeconomic imbalances, such as higher rates of poverty, lower levels of formal education and worse health conditions.

“This was a targeted effort to cut back and limit voter participation by Black voters and other voters of color, and not just some broad attempt to reform voting in Georgia,” said Julie Houk, an attorney for the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, which is representing plaintiffs suing Georgia over the law.

Those disadvantages manifest in elections where voters lack time or transportation to vote, live farther from drop box locations or are less likely to have a driver’s license as a form of ID, said Gerald Griggs, president of the Georgia NAACP.

“The laws have a disparate impact on voter engagement, voter turnout and voter representation in the state of Georgia. I believe that, for the most part, is intentional,” Griggs said. “The only reason is because you don’t like the way a person is voting. So instead of tailoring your policies to get that person to vote for your side, you want to silence them.”

Finding inequalities in election data

Georgia’s 98-page voting law altered many parts of voting, but the brunt of it dealt with absentee voting. The law also banned handing out water to voters, gave more access for poll watchers, allowed unlimited challenges to voters’ eligibility and disqualified most out-of-precinct provisional ballots.

“The administration and process of elections in Georgia has changed dramatically since 2021,” said Bernard Fraga, an Emory University researcher and an expert for the plaintiffs. “We are no longer in a world, in terms of how elections are administered, that is similar to what we saw in 2020.”

The AJC compared turnout, absentee voting rates, drop box availability, ballot rejection data and numbers of voters without ID. By sorting this information by the self-reported race voters chose when they registered, patterns emerged in some areas — drop boxes, absentee application rejections and voter ID.

Ballot drop boxes

The voting law restricted drop boxes by capping them at 1 per every 100,000 active registered voters in each county, but it required at least one drop box in every county. The result is that smaller rural counties that didn’t offer drop boxes in 2020 were required to provide at least one, while larger, urban counties had fewer boxes to go around. The law also limited drop box availability to in-person early voting locations during voting hours, minimizing their usefulness.

Overall, the number of drop boxes in Georgia declined from 295 in 2020 to 178 in 2022, according to court filings.

The largest reductions in drop boxes occurred in Fulton, DeKalb and Gwinnett counties, which account for one-third of Georgia’s Black population, said a court declaration by Barry Burden, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who prepared a report for the U.S. Department of Justice in its lawsuit against the voting law.

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Absentee ballots

The voting law moved the deadline to submit an absentee ballot application to 11 days before Election Day, resulting in a sharp increase in the application rejection rate. In past elections, voters could request absentee ballots until the Friday before an election.

About 28% of absentee application rejections for Black voters were because of lateness, compared with 24% of white voters’ rejections, according to state election data from 2022.

Absentee ballot applications can be rejected for multiple reasons, including missing signatures, missing birth dates or invalid mailing addresses, but before the law, late absentee ballot applications were rejected at a much lower rate. After the law, lateness became the No. 1 reason for absentee application rejections.

Black voters’ absentee requests also were rejected at higher rates than white voters in previous years, but the number of applications submitted too late spiked after the voting law.

Nearly 10% of Black voters’ absentee ballot application rejections were for lateness in 2020, compared with 7% of white voters’ applications. In 2018, the disparity was narrower — just over 5% of Black voters and slightly under 5% of white voters. Comparable data is unavailable for previous years.

Supporters of the earlier application deadline said it was needed to ensure that voters had enough time to receive and return absentee ballots before the state’s deadline at 7 p.m. on Election Day.

Voter ID

Georgia’s voting law mandated additional ID when requesting and returning absentee ballots, but Black voters make up a majority of registered voters in Georgia who lack a driver’s license or state ID number, the easiest methods of providing identification. Voters who don’t have an ID number must provide a photocopy of another form of ID for absentee voting, such as a U.S. passport, military ID or bank statement.

Of 154,000 Georgia voters without an ID number on file with election officials, 58% are Black. The numbers come from a 2021 state list of voters without ID numbers, which the AJC matched to their public registration information.

Black voters account for 30% of all registered voters, meaning they are overrepresented among voters without an ID. About 25% of voters without ID numbers were white voters, lower than their 53% share of the state’s registered voters. The racial breakdown of voters without ID remained similar in 2022, according to court filings.

Georgia has required photo ID for in-person voting since 2008.

Lawsuits against the voting law also have alleged racial disparities in provisions such as challenges to voters’ eligibility, the disqualification of provisional ballots cast in the wrong polling place and the ban on refreshments to voters. Evidence for or against those parts of the law are being disputed in court.

The court battle so far

Allegations of racial disparities haven’t persuaded a federal judge to invalidate parts of Georgia’s voting law. Plaintiffs in the case argue the law violates the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits racial discrimination in elections.

“Any such burden on voters is slight, irrespective of race,” Gene Schaerr, a special assistant Georgia attorney general, wrote in a court filing last year.

The judge in the case has upheld most of the voting law so far. In a few examples, he wrote that racial disparities weren’t significant, such as in a ruling on voter ID.

“Plaintiffs presented no evidence that Black registered voters fail to have the other acceptable forms of identification allowed by the statute at a statistically higher rate than white voters,” U.S. District Judge J.P. Boulee wrote in an October 2023 order denying summary judgment. “The court cannot find at this time that the identification provision has a disparate impact on Black voters.”

Boulee, an appointee of then-President Trump, has blocked some parts of the law.

He prohibited criminal penalties for handing out food and drinks to voters waiting in line as long as they’re outside 150 feet of a polling place, and he barred counties from rejecting ballots of voters who didn’t write their correct date of birth on absentee ballot envelopes.

Those rulings are being appealed. The case could go to trial next year.

A more secure 2024 election?

Conservative activist Catherine Davis, who challenged Gov. Brian Kemp in the 2022 Republican primary, doesn’t believe that voting laws have made it more difficult for Black voters to cast their ballots. She said the voting law strengthened election standards for all Georgians regardless of race.

“I don’t know that I would attribute an accurate accounting of votes as something nefarious,” said Davis, who is Black. “Because of SB 202, or any other election integrity law that passed, they were doing what they were designed to do, which is to bring about a more secure election.”

Opponents of the law see it as yet another way to create hurdles to exercising their voting rights.

“It happens for a reason. There’s a reason the law affects communities of color more,” said Marty Monegain, executive director of the Black Man Lab, an organization dedicated to empowering Black men that is holding events in 13 Georgia cities this fall to mobilize voters. “We have to make sure that our people are politically aware, knowing what these laws are and also understand that they can actually affect any election — local, statewide, as well as on a national level.”