Just after 3 p.m. on the third Tuesday of May, Lamont Hart began his shift outside a suburban Atlanta precinct as a scorching Georgia sun reflected heat off the white-bricked Worship with Wonders Church. Tall, thin, wearing a backward flat cap and holding a notebook, Hart introduced himself to exiting voters and asked whether they’d had any issues casting their ballots.
A U.S. Supreme Court decision a decade ago that tossed out the heart of the Voting Rights Act continues to reverberate across the country. Republican-led states continue to pass voting restrictions that, in several cases, would have been subject to federal review had the court left the provision intact.
Georgia's 2022 election season ended dramatically this past week, but not because of any large-scale problems with voting. And that's prompting Georgia Republicans to say concerns over a 2021 law that imposed several new restrictions on voting were overblown.
While Democrats have long opposed voter ID laws, their decade-long effort to convince voters hasn't budged public opinion. Large bipartisan majorities still favor showing an ID to vote.