[ad_1]
Georgian officials have been accused of cracking down on voters after forcing dozens of elderly African Americans to get off a bus to vote.
The bus, organized by Black Lives Matter, was to bring to the polls about 40 voters from a senior center run by Jefferson County when the head of the institution announced to the group they needed to retire, co-founder of Black Lives Matter. LaTosha Brown said ThinkProgress.
the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that a county clerk has called the main center to voice his "concerns" about the fact that the bus is taking residents to the city of Louisville, south of Augusta.
Brown explained that the group was planning to urge seniors to vote, but some of them asked if they could take the bus from the organization. to go to the polls. She said that someone apparently has seen the bus, which says "The South is getting on the tour," and called the county.
"It's the suppression of voters, in the Southern fashion," said Brown. "I am very angry. I'm mad. I'm frustrated. I have a lot of emotions right now. "
Brown added that no law had been broken.
"Even in the absence of law, they will use tactics such as intimidation and repression of voters," she said. "Someone called the county commission, but there was nothing illegal or inappropriate."
The elders agreed to get off the bus and go to the vote on another date. The seniors center would use its own bus to transport people to the polls in the future.
"At the end of the day, all the seniors who get off this bus will not only vote, but will also get five to ten people to vote with them," said Brown.
Monday was the first day of advance voting in person in the race for the governor of Georgia between former Democratic lawmaker Stacey Abrams and Attorney General Brian Kemp, a Republican. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution revealed that voters were forced to line up on the outside For hours because of the limited number of polling stations.
Jefferson County administrator, Adam Brett, said in a statement that the local government considered the seniors center event as a "political activity" banned because it had been organized by the president of the Democratic Party Jefferson County, Diane Evans. Political activities, he said, are banned at events funded by the county.
"The Jefferson County administration was ill at ease to allow senior center clients to leave facilities in a bus with an unknown third party," said Brett. "No senior in the Jefferson County Seniors Center has been deprived of his or her right to vote."
The NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund required an "immediate investigation" into the incident, calling this act "an unacceptable act of intimidation by voters" that "potentially violates several laws "in a letter to the county.
"During this election season, we should all commit ourselves to ensuring that more eligible and non-eligible voters can participate and exercise their fundamental right to vote," the statement said. letter.
The outcry comes a few days after Kemp was informed blocked 53,000 registrations – 70% of them are of African-American descent – just weeks before his election against Abrams, who could become the first black governor of the state. Kemp used the controversial program of "exact match" to purge almost 700,000 voters rolls in the last two years.
Kemp was also cited in two other lawsuits after the rejection of mail ballots in Gwinnett County. Groups of voting rights lawsuits after discovering that the county had rejected the postal ballots of Americans of Asian descent four times higher than white voters and the votes cast by African Americans a number of times higher than white voters .
As for the elderly, Brown said the group was not discouraged.
"The seniors were so resolved. They said, "We are going to vote. Nobody will stop us, "she told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "This is not the first time anyone refuses them or tries to stop them from voting."
Source link
