Voting rights advocates argue the audacious voter suppression law Georgia Republicans have just enacted targets black voters (see story here), and undoubtedly they’re right. A third of Georgia’s population is black, and high turnout among that demographic was responsible for Biden winning the state’s electoral votes and Democrats winning both of the state’s U.S. Senate seats.
Clearly, one of the motivations behind the law is to seek partisan advantage, and to prevent that from happening again. To accomplish this, the law “seeks to tighten voting procedures in ways that Democrats and voting rights advocates say will curtail voting access and disenfranchise voters across the state.” The manner in which it particularly targets black voters prompted President Biden to call it “Jim Crow in the twenty-first century.” (Read stories here and here.)
While a crass effort like this to game elections would anger any opposition party, including Republicans if the shoe were on the other foot. it’s the law’s blatant racism that is provoking “fury” among Democrats (read story here). The Republicans may have miscalculated if this law arouses the nation against voting suppression and unites Democrats behind ending the filibuster.
The law is cynical on many levels, not least in how the Republicans are attempting to explain it. Their argument goes something like this: Yes, we know Biden won the election, but our supporters believe Trump’s election fraud lies, and have lost faith in the election process, so we have to make voting a thousand times harder than getting a gun so they’ll trust elections again.
The cynicism goes even deeper. The law makes it a crime to give food and water to voters waiting in line, and you won’t believe their excuse for that.
In Georgia, long lines at polling places mostly occur in black precincts. That’s deliberate. As CNN reported (here), “The average wait time after the 7 p.m. scheduled poll-closing time was 51 minutes in polling places that were 90% or more non-White. But it was just six minutes in polling places where 90% of the voters were White.”
Also keep in mind this is in inclement winter weather; it’s cold and wet outside in those lines. Denying refreshments to those in line makes the waiting even more uncomfortable. But there’s something else at work, too.
To understand this provision’s deeper meaning, look at the language of the law:
“No person shall solicit votes in any manner or by any means or method, nor shall any person distribute or display any campaign material, nor shall any person give, offer to give, or participate in the giving of any money or gifts, including, but not limited to, food and drink, to an elector.”
[‘Emphasis added.] Implicit in this language is the presumption that the handing out food and drink in the voting line is not a humanitarian gesture, but an attempt to influence how voters vote.
CNN says (here) Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican who temporarily became a minor hero by rebuffing Trump’s demand after he lost Georgia to “find more votes,” vowed he would “crack down on … handing gifts to voters in line as a way to ‘inappropriately influence voters in the crucial final moments before they cast their ballots.'”
The argument that a voter can be swayed with pizza or a bottle of water is patent nonsense. Moreover, there’s no evidence that Pizza for the Polls or similar groups were campaigning for a candidate or party (on their website, they describe themselves as a nonpartisan charitable organization). But Raffensperger not only asserts, with no evidence, that’s what they were doing, but also that a black voter’s vote can be bought with a pizza slice or water bottle.
You’d have to be in a coma or dead to miss the implication: Blacks are stupid, uneducated, and easily manipulated.
It’s hard to find a more ancient and pervasive racist stereotype anywhere in American history, and in 2021 it’s being given new vigor by a Republican Party that’s as racist as any American political party has ever been.
Consider the arrest of Georgia state Rep. Park Cannon (video below), a Democrat and black woman, who “was charged with felony obstruction of law enforcement after she knocked on the office door of Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) on Thursday as he signed [the] sweeping new voting restrictions into law.” (Read story here.) What could send a clearer message than siccing police on a lone black female protester objecting to a conspiracy of white men to prevent black people from voting? It conjures memories of southern police thugs attacking black marchers for voting rights with billy clubs, dogs, and firehoses.
But those white men may have aroused a tiger. This single vicious act of defiance against racial equality could have the same impact as the violent police assault on black marchers at the Edmund Pettis Bridge in 1965, which resulted in the enactment of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.