Biden slams Georgia voting law as 'an atrocity'

Biden has described the law, which the state's Republican-dominated legislature approved this week, as a 21st century version of the so-called Jim Crow laws once used to suppress the vote of African Americans.

Georgia on Thursday enacted broad voting restrictions championed by Republicans that activists said aimed to curtail the influence of Black voters who were instrumental in state elections that helped Democrats win the White House and narrow control of the U.S. Senate.

As soon as Republican Governor Brian Kemp signed the law, voting rights activists vowed to challenge it. The provisions add a new ID requirement for absentee ballots and limit ballot drop boxes.

The Georgia law will make it a misdemeanor crime to give food or drinks to voters waiting in long lines. It also will set up a fraud hotline, forbid local county elections offices from taking breaks while counting ballots and shorten the runoff election cycle from nine weeks to four weeks.

It will allow the state election board the power to replace local county election boards and permit challenges to voting eligibility.