‘Ground zero’ for voting rights: How Georgia’s new law fits with its past

Commentary

Georgia’s current voter suppression saga began with a bid for governor back in 2018. The contest between Democrat Stacey Abrams and eventual Republican winner Brian Kemp was embroiled in controversy – and not just because Mr. Kemp was secretary of state at the time.

Mere months before the election, a plan to close seven of nine polling places in Randolph County drew the ire of civil rights groups and activists alike. While the plan was turned back due to the efforts of the ACLU, among others, the air of disenfranchisement was pungent.

Despite her defeat months later, Ms. Abrams was undeterred.

Her speech acknowledging that Mr. Kemp would be Georgia’s next governor was defiant:

Make no mistake, the former secretary of state was deliberate and intentional in his actions. I know that eight years of systemic disenfranchisement, disinvestment, and incompetence had its desired effect on the electoral process in Georgia.

The speech also noted the birth of Fair Fight Georgia (now called Fair Fight), dedicated to election reform and voter fairness. Ms. Abrams was the face out front for a network of activists and civil rights groups that pushed back against voter suppression and encouraged voter participation. Two years after political heartbreak, redemption came in the form of a presidential victory for Joe Biden and two U.S. Senate seats.

Georgia Republicans were undeterred.

“Ground zero” for voting rights

On the heels of their defeat in Congress and in the White House, Republicans across the country have advanced controversial voting bills – most notably in Georgia, which many have considered “ground zero” for the debate on voting rights.

Senate Bill 202, which Governor Kemp signed into law last week, contains a number of provisions that many consider to be a deterrent to voting – along with one that could lead to overturning the vote:

• The secretary of state will no longer chair the State Election Board. The new chair must be nonpartisan, but he or she will be appointed by a majority of the state House and Senate. That ruling currently skews the decision in Republicans’ favor and could allow appointees to essentially overturn elections. It also disempowers Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who came under fire from the former president and fellow Republicans due to claims of a fraudulent election, despite two recounts confirming Mr. Biden’s victory.
• It is now illegal to give food and water to people standing in line to vote. The measure is seen as an attack on predominantly Black precincts, where voters have significantly longer wait times to cast their ballots than those in white areas.
• In Fulton County, where residents are predominantly people of color and about 45% are African American, the use of its two mobile polling places (buses with voting machines) is no longer allowed, except during an emergency declared by the governor. The buses were employed for early voting last year to alleviate long lines and wait times on Election Day.

During a recent appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Ms. Abrams was particularly critical of the House bill, incorporated in the final law, that ends the right to vote by mail without an excuse and adds voting ID requirements, among other changes:

Well, first of all, I do absolutely agree that it’s racist. It is a redux of Jim Crow in a suit and tie. … It’s not that there was a question of security.

In fact, the secretary of state and the governor went to great pains to assure America that Georgia’s elections were secure. And so the only connection that we can find is that more people of color voted, and it changed the outcome of elections in a direction that Republicans do not like.

Using violence to deny rights and alter results

Ms. Abrams’ comments are a callback to the discriminatory practices of the 1950s and 1960s that effectively denied Black people the right to vote and led to the 1965 Voting Rights Act. But they also recall key events further in the past that helped to birth Jim Crow.

For example, the Camilla massacre in September 1868 followed the expulsion of the “Original 33” Black members of the Georgia General Assembly. In response to Reconstruction, a time of political gains for African Americans, Georgia initially expelled 28 of the 33 for being “one-eighth Black,” and later dismissed the remaining five.

One of the expelled members, Philip Joiner, led a mostly Black coalition of marchers from Albany to Camilla to attend a Republican political rally. The marchers were met with violence, resulting in around a dozen deaths. In terms of suppressing Black votes, the massacre was profoundly successful.

The truth is, political violence and rioting are still fresh – think back to January. Storming the Capitol to overturn the election is consistent with the country’s blood-stained history of voter suppression. 

The signing of SB 202 – and the arrest of Georgia State Rep. Park Cannon for knocking on the governor’s door as he livestreamed the signing – weren’t as violent as the Capitol Riot or the racially and politically motivated Camilla massacre. Yet last week’s events were no less vitriolic, and they are a specific response to the political gains made by and for African Americans in Georgia.

America is always reconstructing itself

In January, Raphael Warnock was elected as the first Black senator in Georgia’s history – a history that includes gains made during Reconstruction. Who would have thought it would take more than a century and a half to elect a Black senator?

And yet, because we live in an imperfect democracy, it seems like America is always in the midst of reconstructing itself. That’s what makes this current fight for voting rights so important.

“Georgia still has a decision to make about who will we be in the next election. And the one after that. And the one after that,” Ms. Abrams said in her speech after the 2018 election. “So we have used this election and its aftermath to diagnose what has been broken in our process.”

Reconstruction is always going on – with some progress along the way. The temptation to rest on our laurels is understandable, but if history is our guide, we know full well that injustice never sleeps. Vigilance is needed. 

Ken Makin is the host of the “Makin’ A Difference” podcast.