(COLUMBUS, Ohio) — Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost is leading a coalition of 16 states in support of Georgia’s motion to dismiss a baseless federal lawsuit that is seeking to overturn the state’s new election laws.
“Georgia actually expanded the time period in which all citizens may cast early ballots,” Attorney General Yost said. “The Biden Administration complaint has nothing to do with the law and everything to do with politics.
“This brief is a history lesson on what actual voter suppression looked like — and why Georgia’s new law is nothing of the sort.”
The brief, filed today with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, supports Georgia’s motion to dismiss the case.
As the Ohio brief explains, Georgia’s law increases voting opportunities by adding early in-person voting days and by guaranteeing the availability of dropboxes for absentee ballots.
The Department of Justice insists that the parts of Georgia’s law designed to prevent fraud must be motivated by race discrimination because the courts and election administrators have not identified fraud widespread enough to have changed the results of the 2020 General Election and the 2021 runoff.
But, as “the Supreme Court recently recognized, states need not wait for fraud to infect an election before taking steps to prevent it,” the brief explained. “This is not 1890 or 1965. Georgia’s law is a reasonable updating of the rules of the road in a greatly expanded voting environment, and successfully balances the tensions between two virtues: free and fair elections. The Court should dismiss the Department’s complaint.”
Yost said the federal government is using this lawsuit in an attempt to seize control of the details of states’ election laws.
“This brief defends our right to govern ourselves,” Yost said.
Signing onto Yost’s brief were the attorneys general from Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and West Virginia.
