Two decisions handed down Friday confirmed voting rights advocates’ arguments that Republican-pushed laws in Georgia and Texas instituted unnecessary hurdles and barriers to harass voters. Per CNN, Trump-appointed federal judge J.P. Boulee struck down two aspects of a controversial Georgia law: rejecting portions that bar people from handing out food and water to people in line to vote, and another requiring voters to write their birthdates on the exterior of the ballot envelope.
“Given the evidence presented, the Court is simply not persuaded that eliminating the Birthdate Requirement risks introducing fraudulent ballots or threatens election integrity,” Boulee said, essentially saying the Republican state lawyers arguing the case didn’t show people missing yet-another step in a secure process intended to defraud the election.
In Texas, Judge Xavier Rodriguez, a GW Bush-appointee, struck down a portion of the state’s much-derided SB1 law that instituted overly-strict requirements for voters to complete information on mail-in ballot requests and on the absentee ballots themselves. Plaintiffs successfully argued that trivial errors should not cause an otherwise-legitimate ballot to be voided. In 2022, more than 40,000 ballots were nullified due to voters incorrectly filling in their information on mail-in voting documents.