John Blake argues at CNN that Georgia’s white legislators pissing off the state’s black voters is not exactly a bright idea. Really. Don’t make them angry. You wouldn’t like the outcome when they’re angry:
“No one but Pee Wee Herman believed them when they talked about the ‘integrity of the vote,'” says the Rev. Tim McDonald, an Atlanta-based pastor who founded the African American Ministers Leadership Council. His group created “Souls to the Polls,” a get-out-the-vote movement among Black churches nationwide. Earlier versions of the Georgia elections bill would have virtually eliminated early Sunday voting, which is popular with Black voters.
“Black folks are not stupid. We know their tricks. We know their motivation,” McDonald says. “They are the [Ku Klux] Klan in three-piece suits.”
Republican legislatures across the country have introduced…. Well, you know how many of these BS “election integrity” measures Republicans have introduced.
Republicans actually made some inroads under President George W. Bush, Blake writes, then squandered it all in even proposing to eliminate Sunday voting.
McDonald says that by targeting “Souls to the Polls,” Georgia Republicans didn’t even try to disguise their hostility toward Black voters.”
They know it’s being perceived as racist, but they are so racist that they don’t care,” says McDonald, senior pastor of the First Iconium Baptist Church in Atlanta.
They. Don’t. Care. Isn’t that obvious?
“There has always been a strand of Black people, particularly Black men, who have been enticed by the conservative rhetoric of the Republican Party,” says Jemar Tisby, author of “How to Fight Racism.” But the GOP has stopped reaching out and that’s gone. “They’re doing voter suppression so they don’t have to reach out to Black voters.”
Blake continues:
Black leaders won’t have to push the passion button in Georgia, because that button was pressed a long time ago.
Georgia has some of the most organized and mobilized groups of Black voters, thanks to Stacey Abrams, who may be the shrewdest and most tenacious voting rights advocate in the nation.
Many of these Black voters remember when Abrams lost a close race for Georgia governor in 2018, a contest tainted by allegations of voter suppression. Kemp, Abrams’ opponent, ran for governor while also holding onto his position as the state’s chief elections officer — a position many viewed as a conflict of interest.
The perception that the GOP is trying to suppress the Black vote will only make Black voters in Georgia more determined to vote in 2022, when Abrams is widely expected to run against Kemp again, says the Rev. Jamal Byrant, senior pastor of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Lithonia, Georgia.”
Georgia is frankly becoming browner and more progressive, and the Republicans are having anxiety about the upcoming gubernatorial election and they’re trying to do everything in their power to stop the wave,” Bryant says.
White conservatives in Georgia are a’feared Black folks are comin’ ta git ’em. So after the Roberts court’s removing the preclearance section of the Voting Rights Act in its 2013 Shelby decision resulted in more voting restrictions but no decrease in Black voter turnout, Republicans made sure to give Black voters even more incentive to turn out and to turn out Republicans.
Great plan.