Kemp has embarked on what his opponents and critics say is a series of naked attempts to constrict the electorate. Last voter walked out at 12:37am in Union City.” Brown and her group provided support for voters who waited five or more hours to cast ballots in predominantly African American precincts, while noting that in suburban precincts there were fewer lines. But a focus on turnout obscures the fact that voters faced barriers on their way to the polls. Historical Amnesia About Slavery Is a Tool of White Supremacy. } Georgia, West Virginia, South Carolina, North Dakota, and Nevada are holding primaries amid the coronavirus pandemic. Additionally, under an “exact match” law passed by the state legislature that requires handwritten voter registrations to be identical to personal documents, 53,000 people had their registrations moved to “pending” status because of typos or other errors before a district court enjoined the policy. As Anderson told me, the thing about the suppression-by-frustration regime is that it provides dozens of potential exit points for voters burdened by bureaucracy. The high-profile contest between Republican Brian … That’s why we have the secretary of the entire state—not just the counties that do it right, not just the counties that have the resources, not just the counties that he likes.” In the days after voters went to the polls, Kemp’s spokesperson argued that Abrams’s push to wait for votes to be counted was a “disgrace to democracy” and that her concession was “long overdue.”, Many of these criticisms have continued now that the lawsuit has been filed. Today, voter suppression is a labyrinth, not a wall. You can help by supporting Vox's explanatory journalism with a financial contribution today. While it is too early to say how it will fare in court, the lawsuit’s depiction of the struggles of nonwhite voters are part of an argument that voting rights groups have often advanced when challenging state restrictions: that obstacles to voting have created a two-tiered voting system that disproportionately affects voters of color and limits the power of their votes. } var magazine_button_text_352811 = ''; Georgia’s 2018 election was Exhibit A of voter suppression. Most of these maneuvers have rather small effects in a vacuum, and it’s difficult to track the effects of any one policy on the outcomes of elections. (1,557), Chatham County, where the city of Savannah is. In the 2018 election cycle, perhaps no state race was as closely watched as Georgia’s gubernatorial contest. Bates received a confirmation of her registration, but was told that she was not registered when she went to her voting precinct. But when concerns about the state’s election security were raised days before the 2018 election, Kemp responded by claiming — with zero evidence — that Democrats had attempted to hack into Georgia’s voter system. In 2015, the state accidentally shared Social Security numbers and personal information of 6 million voters with political groups and media outlets (Kemp blamed the leak on a “clerical error”). cta_1_check_352811 = true; About 98 percent of the names on that list hail from just ten counties, all of them connected to Georgia’s most urban areas: The other five counties where the bulk of the voter registrations are frozen, are in Atlanta’s metro suburbs, and four of those have the highest total number of pending voter registrations in the state. Ultimately, however, this is one piece of a national crisis. magazine_button_url_352811 = 'https://subscribe.thenation.com/flex/NA/key/G0EECAT/'; var inline_cta_bg_color_352811 = ''; The public must increase pressure not just on the Senate, but also on state and local governments to prepare. Supporters of stricter voting measures argue that these changes are necessary to preserve election integrity and combat fraud (which is exceedingly rare), while opponents say that America’s historical aversion to fair access to the ballot should lead to efforts to make voting easier, not harder. The Georgia governor’s race is balanced on a knife’s edge. Log out? That labyrinth has been under construction for years. jQuery("#inline_cta_btn_352811 a").attr("href",inline_cta_url_352811); Georgia secretary of state and gubernatorial candidate Brian Kemp improperly purged more than 340,000 voters from the state’s registration rolls, an investigation charges. Under Georgia procedures, registered voters who have not cast ballots for three years are sent a notice asking them to confirm they still live at their address. Georgia was freed from this supervision in 2013 when the Supreme Court struck down part of the Voting Rights Act. “There is no way to criticize an unfair process without suggesting that the current process is, by some measure, illegitimate.”. Read: Voter suppression is the new old normal. Where Voter Suppression Hits Hardest in Georgia. In an effort to counter expected voter suppression, a number of organizations reached out via telephone and text urging people to vote and asking people if they experienced any problems at voting sites. Kemp is presiding over the state’s elections while running as the Republican nominee for governor. “Individuals’ ethnic background or partisan affiliation must not determine the power of their vote or their access to the ballot box,” the Atlantic’s Adam Serwer noted earlier this month. } On my side of town, we brought stadium chairs.”, LeBron James went to the heart of the matter, observing amid Tuesday’s troubles, “Everyone talking about ‘How do we fix this?’ They say, ‘Go out and vote’? Why white supremacy is a cult, according to novelist Silvia Moreno-Garcia. But states like Georgia have struggled to meet the sudden demand for mail-in or absentee ballots, and many voting rights advocates are concerned it could lead to wide voter disenfranchisement come November. inline_cta_url_352811 = 'https://www.thenation.com/donate-website/?sourceid=1020084'; Abrams’s team in particular will scramble to make sure every provisional ballot is completed, that every person who faced challenges to registration is able to participate, that all absentee and vote-by-mail ballots are counted, and that every allegation of intimidation or unfair practices on Election Day is investigated. }, Unfortunately, the time to respond is so short, and the resistance so great, that we cannot be sure that America will get things right in time for a November election that today seems far more uncertain, and imperiled. The Georgia secretary of state, Brian Kemp, who is running for governor against Stacey Abrams, is alleged to have improperly purged voters from state registration rolls. newsletter. And just as with the frozen voter registrations, it’s voters of color who are disproportionately affected—8 percent of African Americans’ absentee ballots and nearly 15 percent of Asian Americans’ absentee ballots have been rejected compared to just 2.5 percent of whites’ absentee ballots that have been returned. By German Lopez @germanrlopez Nov 7, 2018… } (1,287), Richmond County, where the city of Augusta is. Red Alert } In a race in which a December runoff is a distinct possibility if neither candidate can secure 50 percent support, every single vote matters. If Wisconsin’s chaotic April 7 election—when voters who did not receive absentee ballots were forced to wait in line for hours during a peak period of the pandemic to cast in-person ballots—was an early wake-up call for November, then Georgia’s chaotic June 9 elections two months later must be understood as an urgent demand to “get up and get going!” Greg Palast, a journalist and the director of the Palast Investigative Fund, said an analysis he commissioned found 340,134 voters were removed from the rolls on the grounds that they had moved – but they actually still live at the address where they are registered. For Reprints and Permissions, click here. For more information, visit our Privacy PolicyX, People wait to vote in Georgia’s elections in Atlanta, on June 9, 2020. On Election Day, it’s worth remembering just how Jim Crow elections worked. The High Cost of Locking Down D.C. for Election Week, Here Are the Local Ballot Measures That Passed and Failed, At the City Level, Progressives Flex New Power, Transit, Police Reform and Drug Policy See Some Big Ballot Wins. ATLANTA, GA - JUNE 09: People wait in line to vote in Georgia's Primary Election on June 9, 2020 in ... [+] Atlanta, Georgia. And Georgia is merely representative of a nationwide trend. Voter suppression really may have made the difference for Republicans in Georgia And that could send a message to Republicans nationwide. inline_cta_bg_color_352811 = '#ffcf0d'; But no matter the outcome, it’s clear that voter rights and suppression will be one of the major stories of the 2018 election in Georgia. Ang cites a Jim Crow–era official in Mississippi who said: “What those smart fellows [at the Justice Department] don’t realize is that we can still get to these darkies in a whole lot of subtle ways.”, But the Supreme Court’s decision in Shelby County v. Holder in 2013 reversed the federal doctrine of proactiveness when it effectively ended preclearance. Georgia’s primary election Tuesday was marred by long lines at polling places and broken voting machines, drawing deflection from the Georgia Secretary of State’s office and widespread condemnation from both in and out of state. Georgia’s 2018 election was Exhibit A of voter suppression. This is a three alarm fire for democracy. It’s the latest voting rights controversy to crop up in the Georgia governor’s race, which pits Republican Kemp against Democrat Stacey Abrams, who if elected would become the first African American woman governor of any state. Get our newsletter in your inbox twice a week. Of the rest, 41,797 had in fact moved out of state, and 8,990 moved from one county to another within Georgia. “Defendants’ failed policies and limited to no oversight disenfranchised untold numbers of voters.”. magazine_button_bg_color_352811 = '#ffcf0d'; var inline_cta_button_text_352811 = ''; Georgia's Secretary of State, Brian Kemp, the Republican gubernatorial nominee, was the official in charge of determining whether or not voters were allowed to vote in the November 2018 election and has been accused of voter suppression. (2,827), Muscogee County, where the city of Columbus is. inline_cta_button_text_352811 = ''; We don’t see it the way we see cross burnings and riots and beatings. Fair Fight’s lawsuit cites individual stories from Georgia voters to illustrate exactly how much of a burden these problems placed on voters. The calamitous election comes as one of the most visible examples of the difficulties some states are having in adapting their elections to the new normal created by the coronavirus pandemic. NYU’s Brennan Center for Justice finds that Georgia—along with Florida and North Carolina—has increased its voter-purge rates since the Shelby County decision.