Brian Kemp, Georgia’s secretary of state and current Republican candidate for governor, has been working at voter suppression for nearly a decade. Though he was only appointed to his position in 2010, under Kemp, the state has closed nearly 214 polling stations and purged millions of voters (nearly all of whom are black and brown) off the rolls. Civil rights organizations and disenfranchised voters have been suing Kemp for two years based on laws he’s been able to pass through the Republican-controlled Georgia legislature— like “use it or lose it,” which automatically purges voters who haven’t voted in three years and/or made contact with election officials, and “exact match,” which places voter registration applications on hold if the applications aren’t perfectly matched to the information in a person’s other official records.
All of this is to underscore two important things: Brian Kemp has been at this for a long time and he’s really good at it.
To get a sense of the voter suppression that is happening on the ground in real time, Daily Kos talked with LaTosha Brown, the co-founder of Black Voters Matter, and first-time voter Debashri Sengupta. Both had stories which demonstrate the various ways that Kemp has built an infrastructure that actively disenfranchises voters and is designed to hand Kemp the election.
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Black voters don’t matter to Republicans
LaTosha Brown has been criss-crossing the South in a bus to engage black communities—socially and politically. The aim of Black Voters Matter is not only to get black folks to vote but to increase their political and social power. This means sometimes the organization is helping people register to vote and other times it is connecting with organizations to do events, rallies, and talks.
On Monday, Brown was at the Leisure Center in Jefferson County, Georgia, with a group of seniors. The seniors (about 40 in total) requested to get on a Black Voters Matter bus and go to their local polling station to participate in early voting. They were stopped by the center’s director who was contacted by the county administrator who was “concerned” about the seniors being taken on the bus to go vote. The administrator, Adam Brett, claimed that the center was responsible for the seniors. Brown is adamant that this is not true. On a phone call with Daily Kos, she repeatedly said that these were not seniors who were in any way invalid, but instead were “able-bodied individuals who decided … actually requested … to go vote.”
Brown believes that this was an intimidation tactic on the part of county officials who assumed that Black Voters Matter is a partisan entity (it is not) and never asked them to clarify their work or what they were doing. According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
Jefferson County’s administrator said Tuesday that the county government considered the event at the senior center “political activity,” which isn’t allowed during county-sponsored events.
Making sure that all eligible people are able to vote and have access to the polls (no matter who they are voting for) should never be considered a “political activity” but instead a civic responsibility. But when Republicans are in charge and don’t want people to vote, they’ll do everything they can to stop it. The good news is that nearly all of the seniors have been able to vote since Monday. Brown said that some of them were able to get off the bus and go over themselves to vote. But she also remains firmly committed to the work Black Voters Matter is doing especially because Republicans in the South are making no effort to hide what they are doing these days. She explained, “Any time you interfere with people’s choice and right to vote, that is voter suppression.”
‘We need our voices heard’
After an 11-years process, Debashri Sengupta became a U.S. citizen. Originally from India, Sengupta registered to vote in the moments right after her naturalization ceremony in March 2017 with the assistance of the League of Women Voters. Though her application was submitted just a few days later, the secretary of state’s office claimed it never received it. So, the League of Women Voters submitted another application.
The response was the same—according to the Secretary of State’s Office, the application was never received.
Sengupta was originally told it was too late to vote in the special elections which took place in April of last year. But she still wanted to make sure she was registered to vote—which is why she contacted her county of residence directly. They helped her and she was finally able to register. Both she and her husband were eventually able to vote in the special elections.
Two months later, they both received a letter from the secretary of state’s office that said they didn’t have proof of citizenship and, for that reason, their voter registrations were “pending.”
Daily Kos reached out to Sengupta on Twitter after seeing her post a message about how Brian Kemp tried to stop her from voting multiple times. About her experience with the confusion over her voter registration, she wrote: “I immediately reached out to the county office, over email, so that I’d have proof, and confirmed that they had everything they needed from us and that our registrations were valid.”
Fast forward to 2018. Sengupta and her husband wanted to vote in November’s general election so they applied to receive absentee ballots at an event they attended in August. They were told that the applications would be submitted sometime the following week and the ballots mailed out in September. They never did receive them. Each week, Sengupta followed up on the secretary of state’s website. The status button on their applications was greyed out so she couldn’t figure out what was happening and why. But on Monday, the first day of early voting, Sengupta decided to give up on the absentee ballot and go vote in-person. A poll worker told her that the absentee ballots had already been mailed out and needed to be cancelled. No one seems to have an answer for her about why any of this has happened or why the process was so convoluted. Luckily, she was able to vote in-person anyway.
She writes: “I was hoping there was someone at the [poll] site who could help or at least explain the situation. I was told to write the Secretary of State’s Office.”
Though she was told the absentee ballots would arrive last month, they actually arrived on Monday, dated October 15—the very day Sengupta voted. She has not yet called Georgia’s voter protection hotline, but she plans to. “I figured that even if I had already voted, it would help them to know our experience to see if it falls under a trend, or if ours is a mere aberration.”
Sadly, we know that it is not. And this is not just happening in Georgia. Because of that, many organizations are doing what they can to ensure black and brown voter turnout in key races. BlackPAC, for example, is spending more than $8 million on direct mail and radio ads targeting black voters in Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, Nevada, and Missouri where there are Senate, House, and governor races that are not only historic, but also have the potential to flip from red to blue. They are also partnering with local activists and organizations to support specific ballot initiatives on issues like prison reform and the restoration of voting rights for persons with felony convictions.
With only 18 days to go until Election Day, Republicans in Georgia and around the country are terrified of what will happen when Americans are allowed to freely decide who they want to govern their state and the nation. That’s why they are doing everything in their power to make it next to impossible for black and brown people to vote. But we must continue to raise our voices and fight for the representation we want and deserve. And we have to continue to remain engaged beyond Nov. 6. Remember, this election is critically important—and it’s only one step. There’s much more work to be done if we’re going to stop Republicans and put the country on the right track.