Dumb legislation? Must be an election year
Dumb things do end up on the election ballot from time to time.
I’m sure you can think of a few dim bulbs currently serving in office - at every level - and quite a few more who tried and failed. Then there are your silly ballot issues (google “Roxie the potbellied pig”), extraneous tax referendums (ESPLOST IV?) and constitutional amendments.
A proposal that fits that last category is in the news this week, and it’s Marjorie Taylor Greene-level dumb - a constitutional ban on noncitizen voting in Georgia.
To be clear, Georgia’s constitution already limits voting to U.S. citizens, as does the law in every state. Proponents of the noncitizen voting ban see it as necessary to make it harder for the Georgia General Assembly to alter that law in the future.
Yet like so many things in politics today, the legalization of noncitizen voting is a nonexistent threat. No one is pushing to change that in our state, no matter what your conspiracy theorist neighbor claims about Stacey Abrams.
The constitutional ban is an election year maneuver by the state’s most shameless fearmongers, the Georgia GOP. New York City recently joined a handful of other local jurisdictions - none in Georgia - in legalizing noncitizens to vote in local elections, and conservative propaganda outlets are playing that for all its worth with base voters.
It’s as if the “New York, New York” lyrics read, “If they can do it there, they can do it anywhere.” But that’s not how the song goes, and history doesn’t match either. Remember, New York is the place that once outlawed Big Gulps. That didn’t catch on elsewhere.
Thankfully, the constitutional ban on noncitizen voting in Georgia does not appear headed to your ballot soon. By law, two-thirds of Georgia lawmakers must vote in favor of a proposed amendment for it to make the ballot.
On Tuesday, the measure fell five votes short of the two-thirds threshold in the Georgia Senate, as every Democrat in the chamber voted against it. The outcome made a Georgia House vote on the matter moot - and saved many Republican lawmakers from looking as dumb as their Senate colleagues.
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— Written by Opinion Editor Adam Van Brimmer. Read more posts like this in the Savannah Town Square Facebook group.
This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Georgia proposed constitutional amendment that would ban noncitizens from voting fails in Senate
