It’s getting old detailing all the crappy ways that Republicans try to game elections rather than just going out and trying to win them. The latest comes from Georgia, where the game is to hold down black turnout by closing the polling places most convenient to black folks:
Civil rights advocates are objecting to a proposal to close about 75 percent of polling locations in a predominantly black south Georgia county.
The Randolph County elections board is scheduled to meet Thursday to discuss a proposal that would eliminate seven of nine polling locations in the county, according to the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia. Included in the proposed closures is Cuthbert Middle School where nearly 97 percent of voters are black.
“There is strong evidence that this was done with intent to make it harder for African Americans,” ACLU of Georgia attorney Sean Young said. The ACLU has sent a letter to the elections board demanding that the polling places remain open and has filed open records requests for information about the proposal to close the polling places.
This is the kind of stuff that the Voting Rights Act was supposed to prevent. A state like Georgia with a history of black disenfranchisement isn’t supposed to be able to move around polling places without getting preclearance from the Department of Justice. But that all ended when the pre-Gorsuch, pre-Kavanaugh Roberts Court decided it was conservative enough to declare racism obsolete.
In 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court rolled back Voting Rights Act requirements that required many jurisdictions to receive permission before changing ways people are allowed to vote. They used to have to prove the voting changes weren’t discriminatory, but that’s no longer the case.
“This is an example of what localities are doing without the pre-clearance requirement,” Andrea Young said.
In addition to statewide offices, Randolph County voters will also vote for state legislative seats in November. All nine polling locations were used during this year’s primary and Republican run-off, so it is unclear why the locations would be closed down, Andrea Young said.
Since the Democrats nominated a charismatic black woman as their gubernatorial candidate, the Good Old Boys are naturally tapping into their inner Lester Maddox.
But they’ll just say that Lester Maddox was a Democrat and the Democrats are the real racists. And, in any case, would Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III really do anything to protect black voting rights even if he actually needed to make a decision?
And, in any case, would Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III really do anything to protect black voting rights even if he actually needed to make a decision?
No, next question
“…Republicans try to game elections rather than just going out and trying to win them.”
Their policies are increasingly unpopular, and they’ve long since reached peak deception when it comes to fooling a majority of voters on what their policies really mean. They don’t even bother to claim the “American Dream” anymore as inherently republican. Ronald Reagan’s “morning in America” doesn’t cut it for ’em either. Were it not for the Electoral College they might already be well deservedly along the way to the fate the Whigs realized.
Cheating and gaming the system is the only way they can win now. Another reason they’re fighting tooth and nail to protect Trump and give Putin a pass, and they’re going to need him. They’d rather commit treason than change their policies to appeal to the majority.
Georgia is BACK to Jim Crow????
When, pray tell, did they leave?
Actually, we left Jim Crow a long time ago and long before the recent domination of our state politics by the GOP and the likes of a Brian Kemp. Remember we elected Jimmy Carter as governor prior to his becoming President in 1976. The business leaders in the State, specifically Atlanta, did a lot to moderate the Jim Crow influence in the state beginning in the early 60’s. After all, Atlanta was home to MLK, and there’s an interesting recounting of what the city did to honor MLK after he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
None of that change was easy and it was slower than many would have liked, but please don’t make the mistake of painting the entire state with the broad brush of Jim Crowism. I recollect that a lot of voter suppression has been going on in a lot of red and/or purple states spread out all over the country inland from the blue coastal states.
We can blame the Supreme Court and the appointment of conservative judges and a Democratic party (including Obama while he was President) that did not focus on grass roots party building.
I’m sure that one of the rationales for closing those polling locations is the very lack of population density in the area in an era when Republicans just don’t want to fund anything, even including voting precincts, particularly if the closing of them makes it harder for poor minority people to cast their votes.
FYI, Randolph County is a very poor and thinly populated county in the far Southwest part of the state. It’s so poor and under populated that it joined (3 decades ago) with the next county over (Clay), which is even more poor and thinly populated, to make a combined single high school for both the counties. Like the rest of the country, while the urban area around Atlanta is growing exponentially, the rest of the state below the Fall line, including small cities like the one in which I live, has been struggling and continues to struggle, economically, educationally, and medically.
. . . party building . . . “, nor on securing our elections and voting rights.
Only excuse (but not a good one) may be having been lulled into complacency (though 2000 should have been an extreme wakeup call!) wrt the threat that Banana Republicans would mount the full frontal assault on democracy and voting rights that they’re currently, joyously in the midst of (aided and abetted by increasingly Banana Republican SCOTUS).
I confess that, even though theft of the 2000 election put me on the alert, I was not prepared for the depths they’d plumb trying to win by cheating.
I cannot wait for these TEA-banging bigots to be so outnumbered that they can no longer cheat their way to winning. These are their death-throws, right? Right?