On Tuesday, April 7 Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms publicly positioned herself against SB 202 – the voting bill signed into law on March 24 by Gov Kemp.
According to Bottoms “The voting restrictions of SB 202 will disproportionately impact Atlanta residents—particularly in communities of color and other minority groups.” She condemns this, and felt the need to issue an Administrative Order “designed to do what those in the majority of the state legislature did not—expand access to our right to vote.”
This order outlines specific actions to be taken in order to enfranchise Atlantan voters as much as possible within the constraints of this bill. Federalist principles inhibit local leaders from enacting laws that directly oppose statewide legislation, but Bottoms’ plan aims to counteract these restrictive policies as much as possible.
Her order will provide intensive training for political staff that will ensure that they are educated enough on these new processes surrounding voter registration to adequately communicate them to civilians. The order also outlines plans to distribute information to citizens about how they can acquire the newly-necessary identification forms for absentee voting, as well as providing for the inclusion of QR codes on government-issued mail that will lead to voter registration websites.
Mayor Bottoms emphasized in her public statement that her decision to impose this authoritative order did not have a partisan basis of any sort.
“I want to be clear, this is not a partisan approach that we are taking. We just want to make sure that people all over the city of Atlanta, all of our communities, have at their disposal everything that they need to be able to vote,” Bottoms told WSB-TV Atlanta’s Jorge Estevez.
Bottom’s order is just one example of a series of public condemnations of the contents of SB 202. Other notable oppositional stances include the Major League Baseball All-Star game’s removal from the state of Georgia due to the leagues discontent with this bill, and publicly released statements made by large corporations like Coca-Cola and Home-Depot.
Read more about the contents of SB 202 here
- g CTA (call to action) — you can copy and paste
- Did you know that the public can attend Board of Registration and Elections meetings?
- These meetings are open to the public by Georgia law. Georgia Open Meetings Act.
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