America has a long and troubled history of voter suppression.
The tactics have evolved from violence, intimidation, poll taxes and literacy tests into strategies like requiring identification, limiting hours at and numbers of election offices and polling locations, and purging voters from registration rolls.
Credit: Natrice Miller/AJC
Credit: Natrice Miller/AJC
Credit: Handout
Credit: Handout
Credit: Handout
Credit: Handout
We’re witnessing this with the Georgia State Election Board. That’s why a lawsuit was filed against the board Monday, specifically targeting its new rules that conflict with Georgia law on election certification.
The lawsuit, filed by the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Party of Georgia, comes as the unelected board is changing Georgia election rules with fewer than 80 days before Election Day. The board’s actions are being driven by three recently appointed members who were praised by former President Donald Trump at an Atlanta campaign rally.
Two of the board’s new rules give Georgia county election officials, many of whom are all in on Trump’s “big lie,” the power to delay or refuse to certify election results based on their belief that discrepancies exist. These last-minute changes, advanced by election deniers and Republican Party operatives, empower election interference by Trump-aligned officials.
Certifying election results is mandatory under Georgia law, but the new rules make it optional, allowing officials to refuse certification if they don’t like the results. Some of Trump’s co-defendants in the Fulton County RICO prosecution searched unsuccessfully for evidence of fraud to justify delaying certification in the 2020 election. The board is trying to create unlawful and fact-free loopholes for delaying or obstructing certification in 2024.
Trump appears to have learned from failed attempts to overturn the 2020 election that control of election administration is essential to “finding” the votes necessary to steal an election. He might believe infiltrating the Peach State’s election board can guarantee a win — even if he doesn’t earn a majority of Georgians’ votes.
The Georgia Election Board’s actions reflect a deeper, historical struggle that has tainted American democracy since its inception.
In 1899, North Carolina’s Democratic-controlled Legislature passed a law that stripped the authority to appoint local election officials from county officials and gave it to the state election board. The law also gave local registrars discretion to exclude Black people from the voter rolls while implementing confusing rules that disqualified ballots that weren’t placed in the right box. It paved the way for a 1900 amendment to North Carolina’s constitution that required citizens to pay a poll tax and pass a literacy test or own property before they could register to vote.
The amendment resulted in the disenfranchisement of Black North Carolinians for more than two generations. In 1896, before the amendment passed, there were more than 125,000 registered Black voters in North Carolina, by 1902, only about 6,000 were on the state’s voter rolls. It was all intentional, an effort to prevent “the honest vote of a white man in North Carolina” from being “offset by the vote of some negro.” The goal was to stop Black people from voting to protect the Old South’s political power structure.
The attacks on Georgia’s election administration are a modern manifestation of this age-old struggle.
After Georgia’s colossal demographic change, the state saw massive turnout of a multiracial coalition that helped secure wins for President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, and Sens. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff in 2020.
When Trump lost Georgia in 2020, GOP legislators responded with an omnibus voter suppression package, SB 202. The bill was filed by a state senator who falsely suggested absentee ballots in 2020 were fraudulent. Gov. Brian Kemp said he was “frustrated” by the 2020 election results and “did something about it” with SB 202.
SB 202 replaced the elected secretary of state as Georgia Election Board chair with a legislatively appointed member and empowered the board to replace county election officials. It also made Sunday early voting optional for counties. Sunday voting after church, known as “Souls to the Polls” in the Black community, was eliminated in some of them. Historically, it’s one of the strongest days for Black voter turnout.
Six months before the 2024 election, Kemp signed another anti-voter bill into law. SB 189 made it easier for election-deniers to challenge Georgians’ freedom to vote and potentially purge them from the voter rolls. Georgians who are young, Black or brown are generally the target of these voter challenges.
Together, these measures empowered MAGA election deniers to influence the Georgia Election Board and made it easier to challenge their neighbors’ freedom to vote. Before it was gutted by the Supreme Court, the Voting Rights Act required states with a history of discrimination, including Georgia, to have the Justice Department pre-clear rules changes before they went into effect. Now, Georgia is free to suppress the vote.
People in power have long used their authority to silence opposition, particularly among marginalized communities. From Reconstruction-era policies and Jim Crow laws to long-standing attacks on the Voting Rights Act, the tactics evolve, but the goal of preserving power without regard for democratic principles remains. That’s what’s happening in Georgia.
But, just like voter suppressors have a playbook, Americans who respect freedom have a playbook, too. It’s a playbook inspired by the strength and spirit of movements that won the freedom to vote in the first place. Movements that are alive and well thanks to groups like Fair Fight.
Pro-voting groups across the country are sounding the alarm on threats to fair elections, and engaging and turning out the voters needed to defeat anti-voter politicians at the ballot box.
Despite the lawsuit against the Georgia Election Board and calls on Kemp to investigate and remove the board members, we can’t just hope for a fair election, we have to work for it. Now is the time to stand up, organize, volunteer and vote. Early voting starts soon. Check your voter registration status now and make a plan to cast your ballot. Talk with friends, family and neighbors about what’s at stake.
By turning out to vote in numbers too big to rig, we can stop Trump’s election sabotage scheme and protect American democracy.
Nabilah Islam Parkes represents Gwinnett County in the Georgia Senate. She is the youngest woman and the first Muslim woman elected to the Georgia Senate, and the first to give birth while serving in the Georgia Senate. Carol Anderson is the Robert W. Woodruff Professor of African American Studies at Emory University and the author of “One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression is Destroying our Democracy.” She is a board member at the voting rights organization Fair Fight. Max Flugrath is the Fair Fight communications director and former senior communications adviser for the Democratic Party of Georgia.
