There are many times you wonder if these people can actually hear their own voices as they speak, because if they can—
whew—there has to be some truly freaky stuff going on between their ears. A prime example is this particular Georgia state senator who felt he needed to
explain and justify his opposition to current early voting days which may benefit African Americans who tend to vote on the Sunday before the election, by arguing he preferred to have more
informed voters instead.
“I would prefer more educated voters than a greater increase in the number of voters,” state Sen. Fran Millar (R) wrote on his Facebook page. “If you don’t believe this is an efort [sic] to maximize Democratic votes pure and simple, then you are not a realist. This is a partisan stunt and I hope it can be stopped.”
Earlier in the day, Millar posted a statement criticizing the county’s interim CEO, Lee May, for allowing early voting on Oct. 26, a Sunday, at several polling places in DeKalb County, including one at South DeKalb Mall.
"Now we are to have Sunday voting at South DeKalb Mall just prior to the election," Millar wrote in the email. “Per Jim Galloway of the AJC, this location is dominated by African American shoppers and it is near several large African American mega churches such as New Birth Missionary Baptist,” Millar wrote.
Now it's pretty obvious that this is practically dripping racial bias all over the carpet, partly on the drapes, and a little bit on the walls. How exactly can you claim you specifically don't want
African Americans to vote, and still claim there's "nothing racial" about it? In fact, I'm willing to bet that this person, like others of a certain partisan—
cough white conservative
cough—persuasion will be more than willing to argue that anyone who says that Millar is showing racial bias is "playing the race card." And just as expected Millar does have an "explanation" and a "denial" that he's being at all racially biased ... and ironically his explanation is even worse than the obvious reasons would suggest.
Please read below the fold for that reasoning.
When challenged by the chair of the state's Democratic Party, DuBose Porter, on the racism of his intent to stifle African-American voters, Millar argued that he was not racist at all, he was a merely a blatant unrepentant partisan.
“I defined educated as being informed on the issues,” Millar wrote. “Finally Mr. Porter is welcome to look at my DeKalb NAACP award, so don’t try to accuse me of trying to suppress the African-American vote.”
But it was Millar who brought up the issue of the Dekalb County African-American mega-churches being in the vicinity. It was Millar who brought up the issue of African-American shoppers being in the nearby mall. No, none of that is the
real problem. The problem is that apparently having these uniformly "uninformed" African Americans be able to vote is a good thing for Democrats. And that's bad bad baddy bad.
"I have spoken with Representative Jacobs and we will try to eliminate this election law loophole in January. Galloway summed it up, 'Democrats are showing their hand on how they might boost their numbers.' For this to be called a 'non-partisan opportunity' by Interim CEO is an insult!"
How Democrats might "boost their numbers?" By allowing people to vote? People who happen to be 90 percent Democratic. The fact that they happen to be African American is merely a transactional coincidence to people like Millar. The real problem is that they're
Democrats. And clearly by catering to helping them vote, Democrats are trying to "tip the scales" because if you have more people vote, that's bad—unless they happen to be the "right" voters, with the "right" education and information.
Unless they happen to be Republican voters. The fact that they'll be mostly white is secondary. People like Millar are more than willing to accept the right kind of black voter; Conservative Republican black voters only need apply, all others are "suspect" by definition. They aren't "informed." They aren't Fox Indoctrinated. They can't be trusted.
It seems to be completely lost on people like Millar that the formation of our country isn't based on the idea that politicians get to pick and choose their most favorable voters, but rather that the majority of voters get to pick their politicians.
Putting the entire race issue aside, that alone should enrage people. The nerve. The unmitigated gall. We used to have poll taxes in this nation. We used to have literacy tests in this nation, which were designed to be impossible to pass if you were the wrong race or the wrong kind of voter.
Even with constitutional amendments which were supposed to guarantee the right to vote for African Americans. Even constitutional amendments that banned the poll tax.
No matter how much people proclaim we have moved far beyond the "bad old days" of Civil War Reconstruction, of Jim Crow, of the the segregation of the '50s, the riots of the '60s, the days of COINTELPRO from the '70s ... the more it appears that in some states we haven't moved very far forward at all. Only a little bit. Barely an inch, if people like Senator Millar can still have their way.
Vyan
12:46 AM PT: One minor point on the NAACP Award thingee. Donald Sterling used to have one of those too ... so it's not exactly an impermeable racism prophylactic. I'm just saying ...