White supremacists in Georgia introduced legislation aimed at disenfranchising Black voters by restricting access to the polls. The eight proposed laws would—
Wait. Did you click on this link expecting a whitewashed article euphemizing racial politics?
If that’s what you were expecting, perhaps you should read the CNN story that says: “GOP state senators in Georgia introduced a slate of bills on Monday that seek to roll back voter access in the state, such as “no excuse” absentee voting and automatic voter registration.”
Or maybe you can read this article from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that—while serving a majority-Black city—somehow doesn’t include the word “Black.”
The proposals amount to an overhaul of Georgia’s election laws after record turnout resulted in wins for Democrats, including Joe Biden’s run for president and the bids by Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock for the U.S. Senate.
If passed, the eight proposed measures — which follow elections where Democrats made historic gains in the state — could considerably reshape Georgia’s electorate and have a significant impact on the 2022 midterm elections. Republicans, echoing a baseless argument frequently made by former President Donald Trump, claim that the measures are necessary to prevent voter fraud, even though no evidence exists that it played a factor in the outcome of the 2020 election.
To abstain from playing “identity politics,” these so-called “news outlets” are willing to sidestep the central issue of this story, therefore intentionally leaving their readers uninformed.
Here are the facts.
- In the two elections where more Georgians voted than any other election in the history of the state, 90 percent of Black Georgians voted for a Democratic candidate.
- In the same election, 70 percent of white Georgians voted Republican.
- Trump lost the state by .24 percentage points while the two Republican senate candidates both lost by 2.04 points or less
- Black Georgians were more likely than white voters to vote by absentee ballot and by mail-in ballot in the general election.
- Black Georgians were more likely to vote by absentee ballot and by mail-in ballot in the Senate runoff.
- Nationwide, white Republicans are more likely than white Democrats to vote early
These laws are not intended to restrict Democrats’ access to the ballot to the ballot. After three separate recounts and signature verification by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, the state couldn’t find any significant instances of voter fraud or election mismanagement, so these proposals will not make the state’s elections more secure. These laws are aimed at Black people.
OK, maybe that’s just my opinion:
Senate Bill 67 will require a copy of a voter’s ID when requesting an absentee ballot while SB 68 would ban ballot drop boxes. Other legislative proposals include ending no-excuse absentee voting, required monthly updates on registered voters who died and expanding the number of poll watchers.
And those are the reasonable ones!
There’s a bill to ban voting rights organization from mailing absentee ballot applications to voters. Not the absentee ballots, mind you. They want to stop organizations from helping people apply to vote.
Remember that thing you just read about voter ID? In Georgia, you can automatically register to vote when you get a driver’s license or state ID. But a new bill would end that practice because...I honestly have no idea. The only reasonable explanation for requiring voter identification while simultaneously stopping people from registering to vote (pardon me while I switch to all caps) AT THE VOTER IDENTIFICATION PLACE, is if your goal was to stop people from voting.
If you think that sounds crazy, listen to this one:
They want to cut out that whole “democracy” thing.
If a legally registered resident of the state recently moved to Georgia, Senate Bill 70 wouldn’t allow them to vote for their congressman or senator. But, of course, this new-millennium legislative version of the Confederate “carpetbaggers” laws is aimed at preventing the nonexistent trend of people from moving from state to state to vote in elections, a thing that never happens.
And, because they can’t make it easier for white people to vote, they are making it more difficult for Black people to vote. These laws make it harder for Black-led organizations such as Fair Fight to help voters. They know that voter ID laws disproportionately affect non-white voters. They are aware that poor and non-white people are more likely than whites to relocate.
This is white supremacy.
These Caucasian cowards might not carry torches and pitchforks like their Confederate predecessors, but their goal is the same—to give Georgia’s white voters a legally enshrined political advantage over its Black electorate. And for those who say it has nothing to do with race, maybe you should know this:
Every single Republican in Georgia’s state House and Senate is white.
I guess when Lincoln reiterated that this is a government “of the people, by the people, for the people” he didn’t mean Black people.
Seriously, he didn’t mean Black people. Maybe I’m paraphrasing. let me see if I can find the quote:
I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the black and white races — that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making VOTERS or jurors of negroes, NOR OF QUALIFYING THEM HOLD OFFICE, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality.
When asked for comment, John Lewis was busy turning over.