Judge partially strikes down Georgia ban on giving voters food and water in polling lines

A federal judge on Friday narrowed a section of Georgia election law that banned the practice of handing out food and water to voters waiting in line to cast ballots, as well as halted enforcement of a requirement that voters put their birth dates on the outer envelope of their ballots.

US District Judge J.P. Boulee, however, declined requests from the legal challengers of the state’s 2021 election overhaul legislation that he block aspects of the law that limited who could deliver an absentee ballot on behalf of another voter and that set restrictions on where ballot drop boxes could be set up.

His ruling on so-called line-warming allowed the ban to still be enforced in what he dubbed the “buffer zone” around a polling place, within 150 feet of the building where ballots are being cast. But he paused enforcement of the ban in the “supplemental zone,” or additional areas that are within 25 feet of a voter standing in line.

“Central to this conclusion was the fact that, unlike the Buffer Zone’s reasonable 150-foot radius, the Supplemental Zone has no boundary,” he wrote. “S.B. 202 prohibits organizations (such as Plaintiffs) from engaging in line relief activities in the Supplemental Zone, i.e., if they are within twenty-five feet of a voter—even if the organizations are outside the 150-foot Buffer Zone.”

In his decision on the outer envelope birth date requirement, Boulee wrote that the defenders of the provision “did not present any evidence that absentee ballots rejected for failure to comply with the Birthdate Requirement were fraudulent ballots.”

“Given the evidence presented, the Court is simply not persuaded that eliminating the Birthdate Requirement risks introducing fraudulent ballots or threatens election integrity,” he said.

In 2021, Republican Gov. Brian Kemp signed the sweeping elections law, dubbed the…