A mayor of Georgia compares "black voters count" to suicide of a sect in the face of controversy surrounding buses

A mayor of Jefferson County, Georgia, where officials have ordered dozens of elderly black voters to get off a bus to go to the polls earlier this week, issued a seemingly racist message about the Black Voters Matter Facebook page.

Bartow Mayor Robert Morris wrote on Wednesday that Black Voters Matter, a non-partisan organization that encourages blacks to vote, should "verify that Koolaid is well served," as reported by ThinkProgress Group.

"It is totally wrong for your group to argue that all black voters should vote for a black candidate simply because they are the same color as you," Morris wrote to the post since deleted.

"A man named Jim Jones once ran such an organization," he said, apparently referring to the leader of the religious cult who ordered his followers to commit suicide / mass murder in 1978.

On Monday, Black Voters Matter stopped at a seniors' center in Louisville, about 16 km north of Bartow, as part of their bus tour to several states in the south of the country. About 40 black elderly people boarded the group's bus to go to the polls on Monday marking the first day of advance polls in person in Georgia.

But county officials told staff members of the center that the event was a "political activity" banned after receiving a complaint from an unnamed appellant.

Black Voters Matter responded to the Mayor by explaining the purpose of his advance voting campaign in black communities.

"If you knew our work, you would know that we supported and continue to support black candidates and white candidates," commented the group about Morris's message. "We support the best candidates for us. … You are the one who should check yourself and your own racial bias. Spend a blessed day. "

Morris's charges against Black Voters Matter seem to be consistent with memes and sectarian comments he shared on his own Facebook page, ThinkProgress reported. Although the mayor seemed to pass his Facebook settings to private on Thursday afternoon, HuffPost had already captured screenshots of messages.

At about the same time that Morris posted on the Black Voters Matter page, he shared an obviously Islamophobic meme on his own Facebook page.

"If a fox came to your house, would you put him in your hen house hoping that he would fit in?", Reads in the same. "I did not mean it. Stop the invasion of Islam in the free world. "

He also shared several derogatory articles about Mexicans and Blacks, as well as articles mocking the appearances of former first lady Michelle Obama and Christine Blasey Ford, one of three women who publicly accused Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh from the early 1980s.

Neither Morris nor Jefferson County Council Chair Mitchell McGraw immediately responded to HuffPost's requests for comment.