Bishop Reginald Thomas Jackson issued a fierce rebuke on Monday against a broad election-related bill introduced by Georgia’s Republicans last week, which he called “another attempt to suppress the black vote” after the former red state turned blue in the presidential election and last month’s Senate runoff.
Jackson, prelate president of the Sixth Episcopal District of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, which includes more than 500 churches in the state of Peach, condemned HB 531 during a hearing organized by the voting rights group Fair Fight Action on Monday.
Among a series of provisions listed in the 48-page measure is a section that would require early voting for primaries, elections and second round to start on the fourth Monday “just before” Election Day and end on the previous Friday. Voting will take place on business days from 9 am to 5 pm and at the same time on the second Saturday before a primary or election.
However, counties and municipalities would be prevented from holding early voting on Sundays, a day that black churches in the state previously used to increase voter participation among the faithful with the “Souls for Research” efforts.
“The Black Church has always been involved in trying to get our people to vote,” said Jackson. “So, we used ‘Souls to the Polls’ as a way to get our elders and other members of our congregations to vote, get together for worship and after worship go to the polls to vote.
Jackson said the new bill “is nothing more than another attempt to suppress the black vote”.
“Let’s be honest: this project is racist,” he continued, before pointing out the arguments that Republican lawmakers have made in recent weeks, claiming that new electoral projects after Democratic victories are aimed at increasing security.
“They say they are introducing this legislation because the citizens of Georgia have no confidence in the election, there are suspicions, that there was a lot of voting fraud,” he said, referring to the November presidential race.
“There were three recounts. There was an audit. There was one process after another. All three recounts did not change the result. The audit did not change the result. All lawsuits were closed because they were without merit and had no evidence of fraud, ”said Jackson.
“If the Republicans had won, no bill dealing with voting would have been presented at this legislative session,” he added.
Another bill that was approved by a state Senate subcommittee in a party vote last week sought to prevent voting without excuse for absentees in the state after a record absentee appearance in November.
In addition to restricting the days that residents can vote at the start of the state, HB 531 would also further limit when a voter can request an absentee ballot and when election officials can send it to voters, according to Georgia Public Broadcasting (GPB).
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“It was these same Republicans who passed those laws a few years ago, who predicted absentee voting, who predicted early voting, who predicted ballot boxes,” said Jackson. “Those same Republicans, when it worked for them, there was nothing wrong with them. But now that blacks and people of color are using these processes to vote, that’s why they now say we have to stop it.”
Hillary Holley, a spokeswoman for Fair Fight Action, called the Republicans’ move “a massive electoral suppression bill” during the organization’s hearing on legislation on Monday and said “they left voting rights organizations and electoral authorities on both sides of the aisle with just a few hours to review. ”
Holley added that it is part of the reason why Fair Fight Action “decided to hold daily hearings so that the public, members of the press and Georgia legislators can really have the opportunity to understand what is in this bill”.
The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc. and the Southern Poverty Law Center also testified at the Georgia House of Representatives Special Committee on Electoral Integrity, where HB 531 was presented, according to the GPB, on Friday to express opposition “in the strongest possible terms” to the measure.
The bill, the groups said in the testimony, is “designed to create unnecessary barriers and burdens on voters that disproportionately affect racial, low-income, elderly, rural, disabled and / or student voters – rather than promoting ways to expand political participation in the wake of the increasing participation of Georgians in the elections. ”
The move, they noted, also comes “in a revealing way” “in the wake of a historic election in which black Georgians represented 30.3% of absentee voters and a total of 36.7% of voters by mail were Georgians of color; where over 17% of absentee voters were under the age of thirty-five. ”
In addition to opposing the provision of the bill that limits the days when Georgia residents can vote earlier, the groups also focus on another provision that proposes photo identification requirements for absent voting – a practice they observe having had a “disparate impact” on “historically disenfranchised groups”.
“If approved, the prospect of these provisions, combined with the requirement for photo identification, represents an intolerable and discriminatory obstacle to access to the polls for Georgia voters, especially for blacks,” added the groups.