Georgia modeled a widely-criticized provision of its election integrity bill off of a New York state law, a state senator said Monday.
The provision prohibiting individuals from distributing food and drinks to electors within 150 feet of a polling station or within 25 feet of a voter standing in line to vote was based off of New York’s election law, Republican state Sen. Mike Dugan said.
President Joe Biden and other prominent Democrats have blasted that provision in particular as contributing to voter suppression.
The widely misunderstood and much-maligned food-and-drink provision in the GA election law is meant to ban “line warming” aka politicking near polling places, which has indeed been a problem https://t.co/2Nna8yh2w2
— Rich Lowry (@RichLowry) April 5, 2021
“We copied that [provision] from New York,” Dugan told the National Review.
New York’s state election law prohibits non-election officials from giving “any meat, drink, tobacco, refreshment or provision to or for any person,” unless the gift in question has a retail value of less than one dollar.
Dugan did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller’s request for comment.
Prominent Democrats have been particularly critical of the food and drink provision in Georgia’s new voting law, even though at least two other states prohibit giving food or drinks to people waiting in line to vote, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Biden claimed that that provision proves that the law “is nothing but punitive, designed to keep people from voting.”
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger spoke out against giving food, drinks, or other gifts to voters, a practice known as “line warming,” in the run up to the 2020 election.
Democratic National Committee chairman Jaime Harrison tweeted that the prohibition shows that “the GOP is hellbent on ushering in Jim Crow 2.0.”
I guess part of @GOPChairwoman best practices included making it a crime to give folks water and food when they have to stand in lines for hours just to cast their ballots to vote. The GOP is hellbent on ushering in Jim Crow 2.0 but let’s be clear #WeWillNotGoBack https://t.co/gQ0cI15WYE
— Jaime Harrison, DNC Chair (@harrisonjaime) March 26, 2021
Major League Baseball, which is based in New York, announced on Friday that it would move the 2021 All Star Game out of Atlanta in response to the election integrity bill.
Biden and former President Barack Obama supported the move, although Democratic Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff and voting rights activist and former Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams criticized MLB for the decision.