Greg Palast continues his mission in Georgia serving with a team that is taking legal action against voter suppression and more.
Greg Palast updates us on the Georgia mission
Greg Palast once again visits us to give us the Georgia update. He recently wrote the article “Georgia Closes Black Polling Stations: White Polls Open for Early Voting” on his website.
Barbara Arnwine was livid about this fluorescent violation of both Georgia and Federal voting rights law, a subject she teaches at Columbia University.
“All the polling sites they cut were in Black and Brown neighborhoods,” said Arnwine, Founder of the Transformative Justice Coalition, who relocated to Atlanta for the US Senate run-offs. She expressed concern that Georgia leads the nation in new, sophisticated Jim Crow vote manipulation tactics.
And some less sophisticated tactics as well, like this shut-down of polling stations in Black neighborhoods in Cobb County. It’s a trick the ACLU of Georgia busted in the 2018 race between now-Governor Brian Kemp and Stacey Abrams.
They’re at it again, says Arnwine. “They cut from eleven voting places during the General Election, down to five for the runoff, knowing — knowing — that during the General Election they had three hour lines with eleven places.”
These five early voting stations are supposed to serve over half a million voters in a county that includes the suburbs of Atlanta.
Georgia law, the ACLU wrote to the Georgia state officials, does not allow for closing polling stations after November 5. Local officials, unavailable to speak to us, have told media that they did not have enough poll workers to follow the law, though voting rights groups have offered to fill the gap.
The hidden reason may be the composition of the county’s board — overwhelmingly Republican — contrasting to the shift in their voters’ will. In Cobb, President-Elect Joe Biden crushed President Donald Trump, 56% to 42%.
