Microsoft has issued a public letter expressing its disagreement over a new election law in Georgia, suggesting the Election Integrity Act of 2021 will hamper the ability to vote for Microsoft's employees. In the public letter, Microsoft president Brad Smith enumerated several ways why the new law is detrimental to both the state and to the company's workers.
Smith previously announced Microsoft's plans to complete its new office space in Atlanta later this year, with more plans to expand it in the future, and predicting steady growth in the state (and in the country). Besides the new office space, the company is also investing significant resources to further the community in the city. Among other initiatives, it is opening more literacy programs throughout schools and universities in the area.
However, amid the political climate stemming from the 2020 presidential election, Georgia's government has undertaken measures to affect how elections progress in the future. In a public statement, Smith and Microsoft voice concerns with the new law, stating it will hamper the company's Atlanta employees in their right to vote. Particularly, Smith enumerated the various restrictions in the number of drop boxes available, the new limit on absentee ballots, and the requirements for provisional ballots.
The company plans to make Atlanta "one of Microsoft’s largest hubs in the United States." As such, it also hopes to employ thousands of people in the area and is therefore heavily invested in events in the state. Microsoft specifically notes how the reduction in the number of drop boxes will significantly limit where Microsoft's employees can vote. Further, when Microsoft's employees take unexpected business trips, some might not make it to the ballots in time for the new guidelines presented by the law. For example, an employee taking a trip out of the state will no longer have the former 180-day limit to obtain an absentee ballot. Likewise, a frantically busy worker who ends up at the wrong drop box can't vote until after 5 p.m. on that day.
Though the statement focuses more on Microsoft's employees, it also emphasizes the law's effects against people of color in the state. All of which leads to Microsoft's president asking Georgia's lawmakers to revisit and rethink the provisions included in the new law. Georgia aside, this is not the first time Microsoft has gotten involved in political events recently.
Source: Microsoft
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