Clash and consensus: A contrast over elections restrictions, citizen’s arrest overhaul

On one end of the Capitol, lawmakers in the Georgia Senate locked horns over polarizing election restrictions that critics said amounted to payback after Democratic victories in presidential and U.S. Senate contests.

Minutes later, legislators in the Georgia House locked arms to unanimously pass an overhaul of a citizen’s arrest law dating to the Civil War that was used to justify the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man who was gunned down while jogging.

The Georgia Legislature will approve dozens of measures this year, most of them with broad consensus. But the sequence of votes Monday underscored how a pair of high-profile proposals involving fraught national debates could both divide and unite legislators, almost in the same moment.

The Senate measure to roll back no-excuse absentee voting is one of the most restrictive election measures in the nation, and it drew protests inside and outside the Capitol and fiery broadsides from Democrats and civil rights advocates.

After roughly three hours of emotional debate, the measure passed by the slimmest of margins — it earned just 29 votes, the exact number needed for passage, all from Republicans. Four GOP senators excused themselves and Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan refused to preside over the vote, so disgusted by the measure.

Credit: Alyssa Pointer / Alyssa.Pointer@ajc.com

Credit: Alyssa Pointer / Alyssa.Pointer@ajc.com

“This bill smells like voter suppression,” said state Sen. Lester Jackson, D-Savannah. “This smells like Jim Crow laws — and it stinks like the smell of a deer carcass on I-16.”

Democrats sniffed as Senate Majority Leader Mike Dugan countered that Republicans weren’t trying to exact revenge after losing Georgia in the presidential race and getting swept in the Jan. 5 Senate runoffs.

“This is not preventing anyone from voting,” Dugan said. “All this is doing is laying the groundwork to release some of the stresses we’ll see in the future as we continue to grow.”

Credit: Alyssa Pointer / Alyssa.Pointer@ajc.com

Credit: Alyssa Pointer / Alyssa.Pointer@ajc.com

Not long ago, talk of gutting the citizen’s arrest law drew fierce partisan opposition, too. Democrats, civil rights activists and some Republicans have tried to revamp the law for years, but their efforts went nowhere amid a lack of political will to rewrite the rules.

The law has remained essentially unchanged since Georgia first codified it in 1863 and was among a regime of racist laws specifically designed to punish Black people. It gave private citizens the authority to arrest other citizens if they witness a crime or the crime is “within his immediate knowledge,” which critics say empowers vigilantes to handle criminal matters on their own.

Stiff resistance to upending the law began to melt after a Georgia prosecutor wrongly invoked the law as an excuse not to charge white men with the killing of Arbery, whose shooting death near Brunswick was a catalyst for the nationwide protests over racial injustice that rocked the nation last year.

Still, when Gov. Brian Kemp announced he would roll back the “antiquated” law — a move that would make Georgia the first state in the nation to remove it from its books — it seemed destined for a drawn-out fight. One Senate Republican was seen dramatically shaking his head “no” as Kemp laid out his plan.

But the unanimous vote in the House surprised even the most optimistic supporters, and it proved a reminder that political compromise under the Gold Dome, even amid vicious infighting over elections measures, surfaces even on the most emotionally exhausting days.

“We can find common ground on contentious issues,” said state Rep. Bert Reeves, the Republican sponsor of the measure, who pronounced himself “enormously surprised and eternally grateful” by the vote. “We need to lead the nation because of what happened in Brunswick.”

The 173-0 vote also achieved something else — sending an unequivocal message to the Senate to embrace the citizen’s arrest measure or risk a backlash from a united House.

The Georgia House has approved plenty of divisive measures, too, including a separate election measure that adds new restrictions to the ballot box, though the changes weren’t as sweeping as the Senate proposal adopted Monday.

But the House also approved a raft of other consequential bipartisan measures, including a bill that would raise the age for filing criminal charges against most people as adults from 17 to 18 and another that would establish a sexual assault kit tracking system so victims could monitor the evidence in their cases as it moves through the criminal justice system.

State Rep. Scott Holcomb, an Atlanta Democrat who sponsored the latter program, sees an emerging dynamic unfolding under the Gold Dome.

“The Georgia House is becoming the more deliberative body akin to what the U.S. Senate is supposed to be — a chamber that focuses on important, weighty issues,” Holcomb said. “While partisanship exists on certain bills, we also frequently come together to work in a bipartisan manner.”