Kemp deputy pushes for increased voting despite controversial new law
Less than a week after Georgia Republicans passed a controversial new election law, one of the state’s top GOP leaders expressed concern about portions of the bill that he believes don’t make sense. “There were some things I didn't like in the law early on in the process, and I spoke up really loudly about it,” Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan told Yahoo News. “I think an important part of this is about continuing to live around the mantra of making voting in Georgia easier to vote and harder to cheat.”
Video Transcript
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GEOFF DUNCAN: I think the best place for Republicans to start in any sort of election reform conversation is to start off by saying, former President Donald Trump lost the election fair and square. Now, let's go have a conversation about ways to modernize and update the way we vote here in Georgia.
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Geoff Duncan, I'm the Lieutenant governor here in the state of Georgia. The final version of SB 202 was a culmination of both Democratic ideas and Republican ideas during the session. And I've got the Georgia flag sitting right next to me, and every morning we open up our Senate with the state pledge. I pledge allegiance to the Georgia flag for the principles for which is stand-- wisdom, justice, and moderation. And so I'm just sitting there thinking, if everybody in this room-- if all 56 senators-- were really looking through the lens of wisdom, justice, and moderation there would be a different angle to this. There would be a requirement for everybody to communicate differently, to kind of process differently, to have maybe a slightly altered end game of really trying to look, what does this law do to help us two years from now when we're facing another series of statewide elections?
There were some things I didn't like in the law that, quite honestly, early on in the process. I spoke up really loudly about. I didn't think it made sense for us to roll back no excuse absentee ballot voting. It was a Republican idea in the early 2000s. Why should we change and not support that anymore, because there really was no broken data points that showed up. And then also, I felt like the early versions of the bill also limited Sunday voting. I didn't think that was a really good position to take. If folks want to use that as a rallying point in their communities or in their churches to show up and to vote as a community, I think that's awesome. Our job as Republicans, or other folks jobs as Democrats, are to go try to win those votes and win those hearts and minds.
So the bill ended up becoming a much better version than what it first started as. But, you know, there were some other things in the bill that, for me, I didn't think necessarily made sense around water and food in line. I get that we got to have guardrails around that, right? We certainly don't want either side of the partisan aisle or some candidate coming up with gourmet meals, right-- I mean, for examples. But I think there was better ways to kind of solve that riddle. I think there are ways to say, look, you can serve water in line or coffee in line if it's cold out. Just, it's illegal to campaign while you're doing it. I think there was just better ways to do it.
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I mean, I hope every election for now until eternity here in Georgia is 100% determined by the voters, just like this previous election was. I have no doubt in my mind that President Joe Biden won the election here in Georgia. And unfortunately throughout the runoff period of time, we watched two Republican US senators lose their seats, and those were rightfully elected. It is what it is. And as a Republican, I've got two years to figure out how to win the hearts and minds of more voters than the other side.
There's nothing in Senate Bill 202, in my opinion, and, I think, the opinion of the masses, that would have done anything to overturn or change the outcome of the previous election or change the outcome of future elections. And that's, I think, an important part. It's just about continuing to live around the mantra of making voting in Georgia easier to vote and harder to cheat. We had five million people vote in this last election and a number of the races didn't go our way. I hope six million people vote in the next election here in Georgia. I hope six million people from all over the state. And I hope between now and then I'm able to convince them that the way that we've got planned out to educate their kids and deliver health care and transportation and government-- state government services-- I hope they believe that a Republican is best suited to do that. That's my goal.
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