Voter Suppression in Georgia

[_Kevin Graham]

Georgia could be electing a black woman as Governor, but not if Kemp has anything to say about it.

“This is voter suppression”: black seniors in Georgia ordered off of bus taking them to vote

Voting rights advocates are accusing local officials of voter intimidation after the incident.

As early voting began Monday in Georgia, a group of black senior citizens gathered for a voter outreach event at Jefferson County’s Leisure Center. Members of Black Voters Matter, one of the groups behind the event, offered to drive the group of about 40 seniors to the polls.

But shortly after the seniors boarded the organization’s bus, county officials stopped the trip, prompting new accusations of voter suppression in a state already dealing with several such controversies.

The event, according to ThinkProgress’s Kira Lerner, was a part of Black Voters Matter’s “The South is Rising” bus tour across seven states to host voter outreach and engagement events. Black Voters Matter is nonpartisan, and the group’s leadership did not encourage the senior citizens to vote for a particular candidate or political party, according to LaTosha Brown, the organization’s co-founder.

Jefferson County Administrator Adam Brett countered that the Monday event constituted “political activity,” noting that a local Democratic Party chair helped sponsor it.

“This is voter suppression, Southern style,” Brown told ThinkProgress. According to recent Census figures, Jefferson County is 53 percent black, and voting rights advocates cite a lack of transportation as a particularly high barrier to voting for black Georgians. Civil rights groups most recently raised this point in August when a majority-black Georgia county proposed closing all but two of its polling places.

The bus removal adds to an ongoing debate about voter suppression in Georgia

Brett told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Tuesday that the “felt uncomfortable with allowing senior center patrons to leave the facility in a bus with an unknown third party.” He denied allegations that the county had blocked the seniors from exercising their voting rights, saying that the group will be taken to the polls by the Leisure Center. However, some seniors affected, like 70-year-old Bernice Hunley, drove themselves to the polls instead, ThinkProgress reports.

Brett has defended the county’s decision, but voting rights advocates and voter outreach groups like Black Voters Matter say the incident fits into a broader campaign of voter suppression aimed at limiting black turnout ahead of the state’s close gubernatorial election between Republican Brian Kemp, Georgia’s secretary of state, and Democrat Stacey Abrams, who could become the country’s first black female governor.

The NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund sent a letter to the county on Tuesday requesting an investigation into the matter and calling the incident “an unacceptable act of voter intimidation.”

News of the bus removal comes less than a week after the Associated Press reported that 53,000 voter registrations, the majority from black applicants, were being held by an office of the Georgia secretary of state (led by Kemp) for failing to clear an “exact match” process that compares registration information to social security and state driver records. Last Thursday, a coalition of civil rights groups filed a lawsuit calling for the exact match program to be ended.

On Wednesday, Abrams held a small campaign rally blocks from the senior center. “We want to make certain that the folks of Louisville in Jefferson County understand that we are standing with them as they cast their votes,” she said.

[_Kevin Graham]

Update:

Georgia Mayor Compares ‘Black Voters Matter’ To Suicide Cult Amid Bus Controversy

“Better check that Koolaid,” Bartow Mayor Robert Morris wrote days after county officials ordered elderly black voters off a bus headed to the polls.

A mayor in Jefferson County, Georgia, where officials ordered dozens of black elderly voters off a bus headed for the polls earlier this week, posted an apparently racist message on the Facebook page of Black Voters Matter.

Bartow Mayor Robert Morris on Wednesday wrote that Black Voters Matter, a nonpartisan organization that encourages black people to vote, should “check that Koolaid you are serving up,” as first reported by ThinkProgress.

“It is utterly reprehensible that your group maintains that all black voters should vote for a black candidate just because they are the same color as you,” Morris wrote on the since-deleted post.

“A man named Jim Jones once ran an organization like that,” he continued in an apparent reference to the religious cult leader who directed his followers to commit a mass murder-suicide in 1978.

On Monday, Black Voters Matter stopped at a senior center in Louisville, roughly 10 miles north of Bartow, as part of their bus tour across several southern states. Roughly 40 black seniors boarded the group’s bus to go to the polls as Monday marked the first day of in-person early voting in Georgia.

But county officials told the senior center staff members that the event constituted prohibited “political activity” after receiving a complaint from an unnamed caller.

Black Voters Matter responded to the mayor, explaining the purpose behind their get-out-the-vote campaign in black communities.

“If you knew our work you would know we have supported and continue to support both white and Black candidates,” the group commented on Morris’ post. “We support the best candidates for us. ... You are the one that should check yourself and your own racial bias. Have a blessed day.”

Morris’ accusations against Black Voters Matter appear to be in line with the bigoted memes and comments he has shared on his own Facebook page, ThinkProgress reported. Though the mayor appeared to switch his Facebook settings to private Thursday afternoon, HuffPost had already captured screenshots of the posts.

Around the same time Morris posted to Black Voters Matter’s page, he shared a blatantly Islamophobic meme on his own Facebook page.

“If a fox came to your home, would you put him in your chicken coop hoping he would integrate?” the meme reads. “Didn’t think so. Stop the invasion of Islam into the free world.”

He’s also shared a number of derogatory posts about Mexicans and black people, as well as posts mocking the appearances of former first lady Michelle Obama and Christine Blasey Ford, one of three women who has publicly accused Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct in the early 1980s.

Neither Morris nor Jefferson County Board of Commissioners Chairman Mitchell McGraw immediately responded to HuffPost’s requests for comment.

[_EAllusion]

https://amp.slate.com/news-and-politics ... ction.html

Hundreds of minority votes have already been thrown out on the basis of pseudoscientific amatuer handwriting analysis claiming the signatures do not match.

[_Kevin Graham]

Trevor Noah may have the only solution to this problem.

All minorities need to register as Republican.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/tr ... SACFPkbFLo

[_subgenius]

https://amp.slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/10/brian-kemp-voter-mismatch-georgia-stolen-election.html

Hundreds of minority votes have already been thrown out on the basis of pseudoscientific amatuer handwriting analysis claiming the signatures do not match.

It is not legislated as any sort scientific method not is it purported as one - you are deliberately misleading the context. The Georgia law in question is an argument of due process (which Democrats abhor) and not an argument over "science"...and for the record, "Just because t is science doest not maketh t due processeth"

[_EAllusion]

https://amp.slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/10/brian-kemp-voter-mismatch-georgia-stolen-election.html

Hundreds of minority votes have already been thrown out on the basis of pseudoscientific amatuer handwriting analysis claiming the signatures do not match.

It is not legislated as any sort scientific method not is it purported as one - you are deliberately misleading the context. The Georgia law in question is an argument of due process (which Democrats abhor) and not an argument over "science"...and for the record, "Just because t is science doest not maketh t due processeth"

Using a pseudoscientific means to establish identity is a denial of due process, subs. It would be no different if officials were hiring pychics to determine if ballots were cast by the named voter.

[_Kevin Graham]

Using a pseudoscientific means to establish identity is a denial of due process, subs. It would be no different if officials were hiring pychics to determine if ballots were cast by the named voter.

Jesus, don't give them any ideas.

[_subgenius]

Using a pseudoscientific means to establish identity is a denial of due process,...

Nope, but thanks for playing.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

What does a state do if someone forges a ballot? How could they verify it's legitimate?

- Doc

[_Kevin Graham]

Again, this all goes back to the Republicans knowing their time is coming. They already anticipate the need to cheat to win. Gerrymandering and voter suppression is their last hope of clinging to a time that has long since passed. If the USA had a more sophisticated electronic system of voting, and one that was mandatory, Republicans would probably never win another Presidential election.

Only 26% of eligible voters voted for Trump in 2016. When voting turnout is down, Republicans have their best chances to win.