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babylonsister

(171,065 posts) Fri Sep 12, 2014, 06:49 AM Sep 2014

Joan Walsh: Panicked Georgia Republicans look for an edge: Suppressing black votes

http://www.salon.com/2014/09/11/panicked_georgia_republicans_look_for_an_edge_suppressing_black_votes/

Thursday, Sep 11, 2014 12:00 PM EST
Panicked Georgia Republicans look for an edge: Suppressing black votes
The GOP secretary of state warned supporters “minority voters” are key to a Dem win. Now he’s charging voter fraud
Joan Walsh

Georgia Republicans are anxious. The bright red state stays that way because African-Americans and Latinos are less likely to vote than white people. Democrats are trying to change that this year – Michelle Nunn has a decent chance of picking up a Republican-held Senate seat, while Jason Carter threatens Gov. Nathan Deal — and the GOP is fighting back.

State GOP leaders are ever more openly admitting that they’re threatened by black voter participation. And now the state’s top election official, caught on tape warning that turning out “minority voters” is the key to a Democratic victory, is accused of harassing a key voter registration project run by the pastor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Ebenezer Baptist Church and an African-American state legislator.

Earlier this week state Sen. Fran Millar got national attention when he railed against a decision by Atlanta’s DeKalb County to expand Sunday voting and open a new polling place at a shopping mall near black churches. “How ironic! Michele {sic} Obama comes to town and Chicago politics comes to DeKalb,” Millar railed in response, calling the move “blatantly partisan.”

Of course Sunday voting is a national phenomenon, available to citizens of all races – although it must be said that once black churches began to organize “Souls to the Polls” events after church, it suddenly became controversial on the right, and states like Wisconsin have limited it sharply. The spectacle of pro-Christian Republicans trying to keep other Christians from voting has always been vexing, and it’s hard to conclude it has to do with anything but race.

snip//

There’s nothing wrong with Kemp noting the Democrats’ plans to register “minority voters,” of course. Those plans are public. But when he’s obstructing an African-American-run voter registration project less than two months before the midterms, it’s hard not to wonder which hat he’s wearing: responsible election official, or desperate GOP partisan?

“GOP candidates in Georgia know they cannot win if the electorate reflects the increasing diversity of our state, so Sec. Kemp is using the power of his office to restrict minority voting access,” Better Georgia’s Bryan Long charged in a statement. He’s asking for a Justice Department investigation. Stay tuned.