“This bill is Jim Crow with a suit and tie.
“Georgia’s voters deserve better than to be shut out of legislators’ discussions – particularly when those discussions involve new barriers to voting.”
– Aunna Dennis, executive director of Common Cause Georgia, speaking about a 48-page bill by Georgia House Republican that particularly targets Black voters in the Atlanta metro area
When North Carolina Republicans eliminated Sunday voting in 2013 after the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals called it “as close to a smoking gun as we are likely to see in modern times” and struck it down for targeting Black voters “with almost surgical precision.”
It appeared things had changed.
Consider that Republican leaders in Georgia notably stood up to Trump when he sought to overturn the presidential election results in the state. And, Black voters showed up in record numbers during the January runoff to elect two Democratic senators.
But, that hasn’t stopped Republicans in the legislature from introducing bill after bill to limit voting options after Georgia turned blue. Republicans cite baseless allegations of voter fraud pushed by former President Donald Trump and other GOP officials, and they have moved to roll back access to mail-in and early voting.
The latest House bill (introduced with almost no public notice on February 18) sponsored by Republican state Rep. Barry Fleming, chair of a newly created Special Committee on Election Integrity, limits the weekend early-voting period to only one Saturday before the election. The measure is one of the most brazen efforts to make it harder to vote in America in recent years.
Fleming claimed the provision will provide “uniformity” in voting hours across the state, but in practice it will take away voting opportunities for large, heavily Democratic counties in Atlanta, like DeKalb and Fulton, which held early voting on multiple weekends in the runup to the 2020 election when many Black voters turned out.
Ari Berman, senior reporter for Mother Jones, says this of the proposed bill …
“It specifically eliminates early voting on Sundays, when Black churches traditionally hold “Souls to the Polls” get-out-the-vote drives. The January 5 runoffs were the first time that Democrats outnumbered Republicans during in-person early voting, and Black voters constituted a third of early voters.
“In the November general election, Black voters used early voting on weekends at a higher rate than whites in 43 of 50 of the state’s largest counties. Black voters make up roughly 30 percent of Georgia’s electorate, but comprised 36.7 percent of Sunday voters in 2020 and 36.4 percent of voters on early voting days Fleming wants to eliminate, according to Fair Fight Action, a voting rights group founded by Stacey Abrams.”
(Ari Berman. “Georgia Republicans Are Doubling Down on Racist Voter Suppression.” Mother Jones. February 19, 2021.)
The proposed reduction in early voting times in Georgia seems likely to make already-long lines in the state worse. Voters in Atlanta waited up to 11 hours to vote during the November general election, and during the June primary, voters in predominantly white areas waited six minutes to vote while voters in areas predominantly of people of color waited 51 minutes to vote.
Helen Butler, the executive director of the Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda, insists …
“There’s no reason for it other than this ideology and this misinformation that there was fraud. There was no fraud in the election. The governor, everyone said there was no fraud.”
(Sam Levine. “Georgia Republicans in sweeping new effort to make it harder to vote.” The Guardian. February 19, 2021.)
Seth Bringman, a spokesman for Fair Fight action, the civic action group led by Stacey Abrams, the former Democratic gubernatorial candidate, says …
“His (Fleming's) newfound problem with early voting is simple: too many Black Georgians used it, and Republicans were humiliated. Instead of listening to desires of conspiracy theorists and insurrectionists, he should listen to the thousands of early voters in his district from both parties.”
(Sam Levine. “Georgia Republicans in sweeping new effort to make it harder to vote.” The Guardian. February 19, 2021.)
“The right lost! So now they are trying to change the rules and make it harder to vote,” Deborah Scott, the executive director of Georgia Stand-Up, another group that worked to mobilize Black voters, said in an email. “It is a shame that in 2021 Black and brown people in Georgia have to continue to fight for our citizenship rights.”
"What we should be doing is expanding access to the ballot box, not decreasing access.”
– Rev. James Goodall, president of the Georgia NAACP
The problem is not just in Georgia. It's happening in Florida and Texas. This is all part of a larger, coordinated Republican strategy to curb, restrict and more closely monitor voting practices like mail-in ballots that, along with distaste for now-former President Donald Trump and frustration with his policies, fueled record turnout in 2020.”
The Brennan Center for Justice tracks voter-related legislation and has identified 165 bills (more than four times the number of similar bills that had been proposed this time last year) in 33 states that would restrict voting in a variety of ways:
* Culling early voting lists
* Placing new registration obstacles in the way of voters
* Purging voter rolls
* Requiring voters to actively request an absentee ballot
* Tightening rules about witness signatures
(Zachary B. Wolf. “The 'big lie' on voter fraud is still with us.” CNN. February 20, 2021.)
The GOP’ has a history of longstanding efforts to suppress votes among likely Democratic constituencies, particularly those cast by Black Americans. One lesson Trump taught them is that they need not be so subtle: much of the GOP base was emboldened, rather than turned off, by his increasingly audacious attacks on the electoral system.
Eric Lutz of Vanity Fair concludes …
“For a party (Republican) that has no real platform and represents fewer Americans, and which apparently has no immediate interest in evolving, limiting or disregarding its opponents’ voters may be the most reliable path to power.
“Thanks to Trump, some of them may no longer be so shy about saying so. 'They don’t have to change all of them,' a county-level election official in Georgia said of voting laws at a Republican meeting in January. 'But they’ve got to change the major parts of them so that we at least have a shot at winning.'”
(Eric Lutz. “Trump's election lies are fueling a new GOP voter suppression crusade.” Vanity Fair. February 09, 2021.)
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