The prospect of states becoming purple has caused Republicans to go insane and push massive Jim Crow-style laws, voter identification scams, intimidation tactics, and disenfranchising hundreds of thousands of black voters over the last four years. It's happened in Ohio, it's happened in Alabama, it's happened in Wisconsin, it's happened in North Carolina, it's happened in Mississippi, and it's happened in multiple other GOP-controlled states.
When President Obama reminded Democrats that this was going on and that the way to fight this was registration and exercising that right to vote, we ignored him and had the lowest midterm turnout in generations in 2014, and one of the lowest turnouts for a presidential election in 2016.
Now Jim Crow has returned to Georgia in the Trump era just in time to prevent the nation's first black woman as Governor.
Civil rights advocates are objecting to a proposal to close about 75 percent of polling locations in a predominantly black south Georgia county.
The Randolph County elections board is scheduled to meet Thursday to discuss a proposal that would eliminate seven of nine polling locations in the county, according to the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia. Included in the proposed closures is Cuthbert Middle School where nearly 97 percent of voters are black.
"There is strong evidence that this was done with intent to make it harder for African Americans," ACLU of Georgia attorney Sean Young said. The ACLU has sent a letter to the elections board demanding that the polling places remain open and has filed open records requests for information about the proposal to close the polling places.
County elections board members did not immediately respond Wednesday to a phone message seeking comment on the proposal.
Young and others from the ACLU plan to attend the elections board meeting Thursday.
According to the latest census figures, Randolph County's population is more than 61 percent of black, double the statewide percentage.
The median household income for the county was $30,358 in 2016, compared to $51,037 in the rest of the state. Nearly one-third of the county's residents live below the poverty line, compared to about 16 percent statewide, according to U.S. Census figures.
It is Republicans who say we have to cut polling precincts, but always in blue counties with large numbers of black and brown voters. It is Republicans who say we must have strict voter ID laws to stop non-existent voter fraud that happens to disenfranchise black and brown voters. It's Republicans who say we have to end early voting in order to "save local governments money" after cutting state voting budgets and preventing black and brown working-class voters from casting votes on days other than Tuesday.
This is voter suppression. It's working better than the GOP could have ever hoped.
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