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Efforts To Disguise Voter Suppression Aren’t Working In Georgia

Efforts To Disguise Voter Suppression Aren’t Working In Georgia

Written by Ann Brown

Oct 22, 2018

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Picture this: A group of senior citizens get on a bus to go perform their civil right to vote and not only do they not get to vote, they are told by government officials they had to get off the bus. Last week, this did happen to about 40 African-American senior citizens in Georgia. And now, Black Voters Matter, who sponsored the bus trip, is calling it voter suppression.

Here’s what happened: As the bus was preparing to leave from a senior center operated by Jefferson County, the director of the center told the seniors to get off the bus. It seems a county clerk had called the center with concerns about allowing the bus to take residents from the senior center. The seniors got off the bus an plan to vote another day in the election for governor between Democrat Stacey Abrams and Republican Brian Kemp.

The reason: “Jefferson County’s administrator said Tuesday that the county government considered the event at the senior center ‘political activity,’ which isn’t allowed during county-sponsored events,” Politically Georgia reported. This, even though Black Voters Matter is a nonpartisan group. But since Jefferson County Democratic Party Chairwoman Diane Evans helped organize the bus trip, according to County Administrator Adam Brett, it was considered a political event.

Black Voters Matter thinks it was something else. “We knew it was an intimidation tactic,” said LaTosha Brown, a co-founder of Black Voters Matter. “It was really unnecessary. These are grown people.”

“This is voter suppression, Southern style,” Brown told ThinkProgress.

“According to recent Census figures, Jefferson County is 53 percent Black, and voting rights advocates cite a lack of transportation as a particularly high barrier to voting for Black Georgians. Civil rights groups most recently raised this point in August when a majority-Black Georgia county proposed closing all but two of its polling places,” Vox reported.

In this Aug. 24, 2018 photo, a truck passes a decorated Black Voters Matter Fund tour bus at a Jackson, Miss., stop where the field team and members of a number of women led Mississippi grassroots political organizations, met to discuss interest and excitement for the upcoming election, documenting the campaigning in locales with important upcoming races where black turnout will be key and exposing traveling national media to their work. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)

 

The county says this was not a case of voter suppression. “Jefferson County administration felt uncomfortable with allowing senior center patrons to leave the facility in a bus with an unknown third party,” Brett said. “No seniors at the Jefferson County senior center were denied their right to vote.”

Jefferson County Commission Chairman Mitchell McGraw hasn’t issued a statement. But Brown told reporters: “Even in the absence of law, they will use tactics like intimidation and voter suppression,” Brown said. “Somebody called the county commission, but there was nothing illegal or inappropriate.”

She added, “The seniors were so resolved. They said: ‘We’re going to vote. Nobody’s going to stop us.’ It wasn’t the first time someone has denied them or tried to prevent them from voting.”

 

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