The Justice Department announced Friday that it has filed a federal lawsuit against the state of Georgia because the Peach State is one of several that are pushing new restrictive voting legislation that the department (and everyone with critical thinking capabilities) believes targets Black voters and is only being introduced now because Republicans have lost the presidency, the House, the Senate and, well, Georgia.
From the Washington Post:
The legal challenge takes aim at Georgia’s Election Integrity Act, which was passed in March by the Republican-led state legislature and signed into law by Gov. Brian Kemp (R). The law imposes new limits on the use of absentee ballots, makes it a crime for outside groups to provide food and water to voters waiting at polling stations, and hands greater control over election administration to the state legislature.
Attorney General Merrick Garland and Kristen Clarke, head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, will make the announcement later Friday alongside others who worked closely on developing the lawsuit, including Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta and Principal Deputy Assistant Pamela Karlan, the people familiar with the matter said. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because the action has not been formally made public.
Of course, we can expect Republicans in Georgia and across the nation to view this as some kind of “big government” overreach while pretending that Kemp’s desk isn’t where Black votes go to die and pretending that the state isn’t still purging voters from the registration rolls for seemingly arbitrary reasons. Don’t be surprised if pro-keep-the-negroes-from-the-polls advocates continue to push the “big lie” that widespread voter fraud is the reason laws are being proposed and passed in an effort to secure elections even though Kemp admitted that his state’s new laws aren’t related to fraud.
Republicans—who have attempted to limit voter access in at least 43 states since the last election—know that they need to restrict voting in order to win. Hell, even their orange Crush-flavored cult leader who used to occupy the Oval Office has admitted it. And since the party that believes all things Critical Race Theory are of the devil can’t get anywhere in the vicinity of a majority Black vote in any given election, Republicans know their best bet is to place as many barriers between us and the ballot box as humanly possible. They don’t have to admit it; their legislation tells the story.
Anyway, according to the Post, this lawsuit represents “the first major voting rights case the Justice Department has filed under the Biden administration,” and it will likely be a welcome move to all who have protested against voter suppression in Georgia, which includes citizens, celebrities, religious leaders, corporations, Atlanta sports teams, Major League Baseball and Atlanta’s mayor.
Seriously, all we want is to vote unrestricted, and if that threatens the GOP’s chances of gaining power again, maybe it’s time the party looks inward instead of cheating to win.