ATLANTA — One of Georgia’s new U.S. Senators says he’s not surprised the Department of Justice is suing the state of Georgia over the state’s new voting law and that he supports the lawsuit.
“We are a democracy and we have to do everything we can to make sure that people have access to the constitutional right to vote,” Sen. Raphael Warnock said Tuesday.
The lawsuit alleges the reduction of days to ask for and receive and absentee ballot, the limit in the number of drop boxes in the counties and the criminalization of certain people handing out water at long voting lines discriminated against some voters.
Warnock told Channel 2′s Dave Huddleston that Georgia Republicans changed the law because they didn’t like the November election results.
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“All of these erroneous provision that they put in this unjust law represents a solution in search of a problem. They’re creating a problem,” Warnock said.
Gov. Brian Kemp said SB 202 was created to clean up election issues and some of the recommendations came from Republican and Democratic county election commissioners.
“That is what the truth is,” Kemp said during a news conference Friday. “There is someone lying to you about SB 202, the Elections Integrity Act that passed in Georgia, and it is not me.”
Kemp and his team said they will take on U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and they will win. He said Garland should be focused on keeping people safe.
“They should be going after the violent crime that we’re seeing in out major cities, here in Atlanta, and all over the country,” Kemp said.
Georgia is the first state to be hit with a voting lawsuit. The attorney general said he and his staff are looking at other states and may file more suits.
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