A Democratic lawmaker in Georgia who attempted to disrupt the signing of a new election integrity law will not be charged for her actions, according to ABC News.
State Representative Park Cannon (D-Ga.), who had previously voted against the anti-voter fraud bill, pounded on the office door of Governor Brian Kemp (R-Ga.) as he was conducting the live signing ceremony on March 25th. Georgia State Patrol officers approached her during her initial disruption and twice asked her to stop, warning that she would be arrested if she continued. Cannon defied them and continued pounding on the door, which led to her arrest.
Although she initially faced charges of obstructing law enforcement and disruption of the General Assembly, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis (D-Ga.) announced on Wednesday that the charges against Cannon are being dropped.
“While some of Representative Cannon’s colleagues and the police officers involved may have found her behavior annoying,” Willis said in a statement, “such sentiment does not justify a presentment to a grand jury of the allegations in the arrest warrants or any other felony charges.”
Cannon celebrated the announcement by tweeting that “doors of injustice are everywhere, and we cannot stop knocking.” Cannon and her supporters had falsely claimed that she was arrested simply for protesting, even though the charges pointed to her disrupting an official action by the state legislature and continuing her disruption even after officers warned her to stop.
The bill in question, the Election Integrity Act of 2021, was passed into law after widespread voter fraud took place in Georgia and other key swing states across the country in the 2020 election. The law seeks to curtail some of the more questionable voting practices that are susceptible to fraud, and among other provisions, requires that some form of photo ID be submitted when applying for a mail-in ballot, and reduces the timespan of runoff elections from nine weeks to just four weeks.