In Georgia, black voters have been ordered to get off a bus to go to the polls

LOUISVILLE, Georgia. – A group that encourages African Americans to vote told about 40 black residents of an elderly housing center in Georgia who had been asked to get off a bus to drive them to vote.

Jefferson County, which operates the main center, viewed Monday's event as a "political activity" that is not allowed at county-sponsored events, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

Monday was the first day of advance voting in person in Georgia. Democrats Stacey Abrams and Republican Brian Kemp run for office.

The senior director of the center asked the elderly residents to get off the bus, said LaTosha Brown, co-founder of Black Voters Matter.

"We knew it was a tactic of intimidation," Brown told the Atlanta newspaper. "It was really useless. They are cultivated people. "

Officials felt ill at ease to allow senior center clients to leave on a bus with "an unknown third party," said county administrator Adam Brett.

"No senior in the Jefferson County Seniors Center has been deprived of his or her right to vote," said Brett.

Older people plan to vote later, the newspaper reported.

The county is about 140 miles southeast of Atlanta.

Access to polling stations is a controversial issue in the Georgian governor's candidacy race, which is closely monitored. Civil rights organizations are suing Kemp, the Georgian state secretary. The federal prosecution accuses the Kemp office of preventing minority voters from registering before the November 6 elections.

Abrams would become the first black female governor of the country if she won. A recent public survey indicates that the race is dead.

An analysis by the Associated Press recently revealed that more than 53,000 applications for voter registration were pending. The population of Georgia is about 32 percent black, but the list of voters waiting at the Kemp office is close to 70 percent black.

Kemp's office blamed racial disparity on the New Georgia Project, a voter registration group founded by Abrams in 2013. According to the organization, the organization failed to register voters and submitted inadequate forms for an election. group of candidates basically black.