You’ve no doubt seen the news that last night, Georgia’s Governor, Brian Kemp, signed a massive elections bill which amounts to nothing more than voter suppression.
To give you some context as to how unpopular this bill is, here are some statistics from PoliticalWire as to how the people of Georgia feel about it:
- 77% oppose criminalizing the distribution of food and water to people standing in line waiting to vote.
- 76% oppose allowing the state legislature to take election authority away from local elections officials, counties, and the Secretary of State.
- 70% oppose throwing out the vote of any eligible voter who votes at the wrong precinct location, regardless of circumstances like being given incorrect information by an election official.
This is just more evidence that 1) Republicans do not care about what we the people think, and 2) they are openly attacking democracy.
I keep getting questions about what we should do, and I have some suggestions below, but first I need to share with you more ugly truth.
This is only the beginning.
The truth is that the GOP has proposed 253 bills to restrict voting in 43 states. What just passed in Georgia is the beginning of what is, no joke, a fight for our democracy. If we don’t stop this right now, we’re going to be in a world of hurt and we won’t get the chance to fix any other issues.
What we can do
First off, what can we do about Georgia?
Well, the good news is that Marc Elias of Democracy Docket announced within 2 hours of Kemp signing the bill into law that they had filed a lawsuit on behalf of New Georgia Project, Black Voters Matter Fund and Rise, arguing that the bill violates the Fourteenth Amendment and the Voting Rights Act.
That said, every organization focused on elections in Georgia is going to need donations to help combat this law. I’ve got a great list of those organizations listed in an older article (about how to help elect now-Senators Warnock and Ossoff) but in the “donate” section, there is a list of 40+ Georgia organizations we can support right now.
Next, what can we do to stop these voter suppression bills?
With 253 bills in 43 states, the chances are really, really good you’ve got a voter suppression bill working its way through your state’s legislature right now. The Brennan Center has that list, by state, right HERE. Take one minute to look what bills are proposed in your state. Copy the bill numbers and then send your local/state legislators an email, or call them, and tell them to stop the bills asap. You can find their contact information HERE.
And of course, at the federal level, we need to put our energy into making sure that the For The People Act (HR1/S1) gets passed as soon as possible. It requires reforming the filibuster at the very least, so daily pressure must be applied. Call or email your Senators in Congress today.
Thank you for taking action!
Are you on Instagram? If so, be sure to follow me there! I share different content there and post fairly often about voting rights.
Categories: Uncategorized
Tokyo, I posted this on Jill’s site this morning. The words say one thing, but suppressing the vote of others who may disagree with you is as old a tradition in America as the right to vote. First, only land owners could vote, in 1865 former slaves could vote (but that proved difficult for 100 years), in 1920 women were given the right to vote, and as noted above, in 1965 the Voting Rights Act was passed to better enable all people to vote.
In the last ten years since the 2010 midterms, there has been an active Voter suppression campaign waged by the Republican Party wrapped up in cookie cutter Voter ID Laws and gerrymandering, many of which were ruled unconstitutional. Then SCOTUS, who must live in a different country, watered down some requirements on the Voting Rights Act saying it was unneeded.
Democrats have done their share of gerrymandering, but using a judge’s words, the Republicans have used “laser-like precision” to discriminate. Then, along comes a now-former president whose fragile ego cannot handle losing even a coin-flip. He set in motion months ahead of the election to claim wide-scale voter fraud, which he could never prove in court and one of his attorneys is using as a defense in a defamation lawsuit that no one should have taken her outlandish claims seriously (of course, she was parroting her client).
These new efforts to suppress votes indicated the Republicans know the demographics are against them and they need to cheat even more. These observations come from a former Republican and independent voter. Keith
Very important post, and I appreciate the resources. Another step readers can take is to support the new effort THE DEMOCRACY PLEDGE. I think it’s such a potentially useful tool that I am taking the liberty of linking to my post about it below. When President Biden said in his press conference that the battle is between autocracy and democracy, he wasn’t speaking solely of occurrences in other countries. This is the threat we face—right here, right now!
https://annieasksyou.com/2021/03/24/would-you-will-you-support-the-democracy-pledge/
Thank you, Annie!
You’re welcome. I plan to reblog your post today: those resources should be shared. But I see no reblog button.
I’ll work it out.
Cheers,
Annie
Yeah, somehow my reblog button disappeared when I added a plug-in I needed a year ago. I know other WP folks reblog me, but I’m unsure how they do that.
I put a little intro and then copied and pasted. I think it worked fine. Thank you for posting it.