Citizens On Patrol

Want to serve the Peach State? Georgia's Republican Secretary of State wants YOU to help keep undesirable people from voting!

Add Georgia to the list of states where Republican officials are actively engaged in voter suppression efforts.

In the midst of a record turnout for early voting in Georgia, that has led to long lines, discouraged voters and exhausted poll workers, Secretary of State Karen Handel, a Republican, has claimed federal law ties her hands, preventing her from extending early voting hours.

With just days to go to the election, Democratic politicians demanded yesterday that Handel step in and extend early voting hours -- as has been done in both North Carolina and Florida.

But in an opinion piece published in the AJC on Thursday, Handel blamed her inaction on the issue on federal law which requires Justice Department approval to change voting law.

Ironically, it is Georgia's history of discriminatory voting practices that puts it on a federal "pre-clearance" list, mentioned in Section 5 of the Voter Rights Act of 1965.

While the DOJ can take up to 60 days to review any change that is submitted, it has the power to grant expedited review in emergency situations -- and Georgia's situation would certainly seem to qualify, Gerry Hebert, a former acting head of DOJ's voting-rights section, told TPMmuckraker.

"Georgia has asked and been granted expedited review by the DOJ in the past, so to say because of the voting act, we can't do this -- that's not really accurate," Hebert said. "The DOJ has done this in as little as 24 hours. . . so to use Section 5 as an excuse that this isn't possible, that's someone that really doesn't want to make the change."

But here's the best part:

As first noted by the blog, Facing South, in an interview Wednesday with the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Handel took pains to remind voters that any voter can challenge another's qualifications to cast a ballot by notifying a precinct poll manager. According to Handel, that voter then would be given a challenge ballot and would have to go before the election board.

How many folks will be disenfranchised in Georgia because of this, I'm wondering?

Remember folks, 600 votes was the difference in Florida in 2000.

Those 600 voters disenfranchised by Republican Secretary of State Katherine Harris were the difference between Bush and Gore.

The thousands of African-American voters in Ohio disenfranchised by Republican Secretary of State Ken Blackwell in 2004 were the difference between Bush and Kerry.

The efforts this year are far more insidious, vile, and widespread.

They will stop at nothing to win. Do not take your right to vote for granted, especially if you are a minority voter in an urban area.