ThinkCivics News
An educated citizenry is a vital requisite
for our survival as a free people.
Join ThinkCivics+
  • Culture & Society
  • Economy
  • Health
  • US News
  • Faith
  • Science & Tech
  • World News
No Result
View All Result
ThinkCivics News
  • Culture & Society
  • Economy
  • Health
  • US News
  • Faith
  • Science & Tech
  • World News
Join ThinkCivics+
No Result
View All Result
ThinkCivics News
Join TC+
Home US News

Why the Georgia G.O.P.’s Voting Rollbacks Will Hit Black People Hard

ThinkCivics Newswire by ThinkCivics Newswire
March 26, 2021
in US News
Reading Time: 4 mins read
0
0
Why the Georgia G.O.P.’s Voting Rollbacks Will Hit Black People Hard

After record turnout flipped Georgia blue for the first time in decades, Republicans who control the state Legislature moved swiftly to put in place a raft of new restrictions on voting access, passing a new bill that was signed into law on Thursday.

The law will alter foundational elements of voting in Georgia, which supported President Biden in November and a pair of Democratic senators in January — narrow victories attributable in part to the turnout of Black voters and the array of voting options in the state.

Taken together, the new barriers will have an outsize impact on Black voters, who make up roughly one-third of the state’s population and vote overwhelmingly Democratic.

The Republican legislation will undermine pillars of voting access by limiting drop boxes for mail ballots, introducing more rigid voter identification requirements for absentee balloting and making it a crime to provide food or water to people waiting in line to vote. Long lines to vote are common in Black neighborhoods in Georgia’s cities, particularly Atlanta, where much of the state’s Democratic electorate lives.

The new law also expands the Legislature’s power over elections, which has raised worries that it could interfere with the vote in predominantly Democratic, heavily Black counties like Fulton and Gwinnett.

Black voters were a major force in Democratic success in recent elections, with roughly 88 percent voting for Mr. Biden and more than 90 percent voting for Senators Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff in the January runoff elections, according to exit polls.

Democrats say that Republicans are effectively returning to one of the ugliest tactics in the state’s history — oppressive laws aimed at disenfranchising voters.

“Rather than grappling with whether their ideology is causing them to fail, they are instead relying on what has worked in the past,” Stacey Abrams, the voting rights activist, said as the bill made its way through the Legislature, referring to what she said were laws designed to suppress votes. “Instead of winning new voters, you rig the system against their participation, and you steal the right to vote.”

The Georgia law comes as former President Donald J. Trump has continued to publicly promote the lie that the election was stolen from him, which has swayed millions of Republican voters. It also puts further pressure on Republican state legislatures across the country to continue drafting new legislation aimed at restricting voting rights under the banner of “election integrity” as a way of appeasing the former president and his loyal base.

New restrictions on voting have already passed in Iowa, and multiple other states are lining up similar efforts, while the Supreme Court signaled this month that it was ready to make it harder to challenge all sorts of limits on voting around the nation.

Should the high court make changes to Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which allows after-the-fact challenges to voting restrictions that may disproportionately affect members of minority groups, Democrats and voting rights groups could be left without one of their most essential tools to challenge new laws.

For decades, Georgia has been at the center of the voting rights battle, with Democrats and advocacy groups fighting back against repeated efforts to disenfranchise Black voters in the state.

As recently as 2018, Georgians faced hourslong lines to vote in many predominantly Black neighborhoods, and thousands of Black voters were purged from the voting rolls before the election. Now Republicans have again changed the state’s voting laws ahead of critical Senate and governor’s races in 2022.

Democrats, shut out of power in the Statehouse despite holding both United States Senate seats, were relatively powerless in the legislative process to stop the voting bill, though they do now have avenues through the courts to challenge the law.

The initial iterations of the bill contained measures that voting rights groups said would have even more directly targeted Black voters, like a proposal to restrict early voting on the weekends that would limit the longstanding civic tradition of “Souls to the Polls,” in which Black voters cast ballots on Sunday after church services.

In an interview earlier this month, Ms. Abrams, the former Democratic minority leader in the Georgia House of Representatives, called Republicans’ effort “a sign of fear” over their failure to win support from young and minority voters, two of the fastest-growing sectors of the state’s electorate.

She added that the measure was also potentially self-defeating for the G.O.P. in that large percentages of rural white voters, a traditionally Republican-leaning bloc, could also be impeded by laws that make it harder for citizens to cast absentee ballots and vote by mail.

Republicans have defended the new measures, saying they are focused on election security. In remarks on Thursday after signing the new law, Gov. Brian Kemp said that after the 2020 election, “we quickly began working with the House and Senate on further reforms to make it easier to vote and harder to cheat.” He added, “The bill I signed into law does just that.”

Isabella Grullón Paz contributed reporting.

Read the original article.

ThinkCivics Newswire

ThinkCivics researches, examines, and reports on issues that matter most. We deliver explanative, fearless, and insightful analysis for public consumption.

thinkcivics.com
Tags: Black PeopleDiscriminationGeorgiaLaw and LegislationPresidential Election of 2020Republican partyUnited States Politics and GovernmentVoter Registration and RequirementsVoting and Voters

Related Posts

To Fight Racial Injustice, the US Army Will Rename Nine Historic Bases

To Fight Racial Injustice, the US Army Will Rename Nine Historic Bases

May 26, 2022
Witnesses: Police Refused to Enter School as Uvalde Shooter Rampaged, Subdued Parents Begging Them to Act

Witnesses: Police Refused to Enter School as Uvalde Shooter Rampaged, Subdued Parents Begging Them to Act

May 26, 2022

Mike Rowe Says Feds Revoked His Filming Permit, Received Call Claiming It Was Pulled For His ‘Personal Politics’

May 25, 2022

Candace Owens SCORCHES Bias Media for Labeling Her a Russian Propagandist

May 25, 2022
Load More
Next Post
Buttigieg Asks Congress for ‘Generational Investment’ in Infrastructure

Buttigieg Asks Congress for ‘Generational Investment’ in Infrastructure

The Tale Wags the Dog as News Becomes Propaganda

The Tale Wags the Dog as News Becomes Propaganda

There Is No ‘China Model’

There Is No 'China Model'

TODAY'S TOP STORIES

  • FBI Agent at Sussmann Trial Just Dropped a Bomb About an Ongoing Investigation

    FBI Agent at Sussmann Trial Just Dropped a Bomb About an Ongoing Investigation

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • BREAKING: State Farm Exec Apologizes to Angry Agents, Says ‘We Made a Mistake With Our Involvement’ With GenderCool

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Reporter Shuts Down Blue Checkmark Leftist ‘Hack’ Distorting His Coverage of Texas School Shooting

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Punks Attempt Another Smash and Grab, Pick Jewelry Store Where Employees Were Itching For A Fight

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Bill Maher Notices Something Odd About These Transgender Kids

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0

Handwritten Notes From 2017 Show FBI Agents Mislead DOJ On The Trump-Russia Investigation

by The Federalist
May 19, 2022
0
Handwritten Notes From 2017 Show FBI Agents Mislead DOJ On The Trump-Russia Investigation
National Security

Hillary Clinton’s campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann is currently on trial for lying to the FBI about his role in pushing...

Read more

Jankowicz Got The Boot, But Biden’s ‘Ministry Of Truth’ Hired Replacements Are WORST

by ThinkCivics Newswire
May 19, 2022
0
Jankowicz Got The Boot, But Biden’s ‘Ministry Of Truth’ Hired Replacements Are WORST
National Security

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) hired the co-author of the PATRIOT Act, arguably the harshest crackdown on civil liberties...

Read more

MSNBC Guests Want GOP Labeled ‘Domestic Terror Party,’ Jail Time For Having The Wrong Opinions

by The Political Insider
May 19, 2022
0
MSNBC Guests Want GOP Labeled ‘Domestic Terror Party,’ Jail Time For Having The Wrong Opinions
National Security

We all know that Democrats and the left love to operate on the premise of “never let a good crisis...

Read more

Incredible Video: George W. Bush Accidentally Condemns ‘Unjustified and Brutal Invasion of Iraq’

by The Political Insider
May 19, 2022
0
Incredible Video: George W. Bush Accidentally Condemns ‘Unjustified and Brutal Invasion of Iraq’
National Security

George W. Bush committed a Freudian slip so brutal they may have to rename the phenomenon after him. The former...

Read more
Watch: Davos Elites Warn “Painful Global Transition” Should Not Be Resisted By Nation-States
Economy

Watch: Davos Elites Warn “Painful Global Transition” Should Not Be Resisted By Nation-States

by Zero Hedge
May 24, 2022
0

As World Economic Forum head Klaus Schwab proclaimed that “the future is built by us” at the opening of the...

Read more
This Year’s World Economic Forum in Davos Is as Disturbing as You’d Expect
Economy

This Year’s World Economic Forum in Davos Is as Disturbing as You’d Expect

by RedState
May 23, 2022
0

It’s the time of year again when thousands of the world’s most powerful and wealthy people gather in Davos, Switzerland...

Read more
Is Trump A Modern Day Nostradamus? Watch His Prediction Of What Would Happen If Biden Won
Economy

Is Trump A Modern Day Nostradamus? Watch His Prediction Of What Would Happen If Biden Won

by The Political Insider
May 23, 2022
0

President Trump is many things, to friend and foe alike. Is being a modern day Nostradamus among them? At least...

Read more
U.S. economy may outpace China’s this year for the first time in nearly 50 years
Economy

U.S. economy may outpace China’s this year for the first time in nearly 50 years

by Just the News
May 21, 2022
0

The growth of the U.S. economy is set to outpace that of China's for the first time in nearly five...

Read more
Facebook Twitter RSS

Brilliantly

SAFE!

thinkcivics.com

Content & Links

Verified by Sur.ly

2022

Recent News

  • To Fight Racial Injustice, the US Army Will Rename Nine Historic Bases
  • Witnesses: Police Refused to Enter School as Uvalde Shooter Rampaged, Subdued Parents Begging Them to Act
  • Mike Rowe Says Feds Revoked His Filming Permit, Received Call Claiming It Was Pulled For His ‘Personal Politics’

Category

  • Culture & Society
  • Economy
  • Editorials
  • Education
  • Elections
  • Energy
  • Environment
  • Faith
  • Health
  • Immigration
  • Military
  • National Security
  • Politics
  • Science & Tech
  • US News
  • Videos
  • World News

© 2022 ThinkCivics Media. All Rights Reserved.

  • Login
  • Sign Up
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • About
  • Store
  • Contact Us
  • Join
  • Contribute

© 2022 ThinkCivics Media. All Rights Reserved.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password? Sign Up

Create New Account!

OR

Fill the forms below to register

All fields are required. Log In

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this website you are giving consent to cookies being used. Visit our Privacy and Cookie Policy.