Tbilisi: Georgia Governor Brian Kemp signed into law a sweeping Republican-sponsored overhaul of state elections that includes new restrictions on voting by mail and gives the legislature greater control over how elections are run.
Among other things, the law requires a photo ID in order to vote absentee by mail, after more than 1.3 million Georgia voters used that option during the COVID-19 pandemic. It also cuts the time people have to request an absentee ballot and limits where ballot drop boxes can be placed and when they can be accessed.
US President Joe Biden has likened a new voting law in the state of Georgia to racist policies of the 20th Century American South, calling it an atrocity.
The law adds restrictions to voting that said disproportionately targeted black Americans.
In a strongly-worded statement, the president called it “Jim Crow in the 21st century” and “a blatant attack on the Constitution”.
He later added that the justice department was “taking a look” at it.
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