Bishop Reginald Thomas Jackson on Monday issued a scathing rebuke over a broad election-related bill tabled by Georgia’s Republicans last week, calling it “another attempt to suppress the black vote” after the former state red would turn blue in last month’s presidential election and Senate. runoff.
Jackson, prelate president of the Sixth Episcopal District of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, which includes more than 500 churches in Peach state, condemned HB 531 on Monday during a hearing organized by the voting rights group Fair Fight Action.
Among a number of 48-page provisions, there is a section that would require early voting for primaries, elections, and eliminations to begin the fourth Monday “immediately before” election day and end on previous Friday. Voting would take place on weekdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and the same hours on the second Saturday before the primary or election.
However, counties and municipalities would be prohibited from holding early voting on Sundays, a day the state’s black churches have previously used to increase voter turnout among congregants with “Souls at the polls” efforts.
“The black church has always been dedicated to trying to get our people to vote,” Jackson said. “So we used‘ Souls at the polls ’as a means particularly to get our elders and other members of our congregations to vote, to gather for worship, and to follow worship to 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 bill is racist,” he continued, before pointing to the arguments Republican lawmakers have made in recent weeks stating that new election bills after Democratic victories are aimed at increasing security.
“They say they are introducing this legislation because the citizens of Georgia do not have confidence in the elections, there are suspicions, there has been a lot of fraud in the voting,” he said, referring to the November presidential contest.
“There were three stories. There has been an audit. There was court case after court case. All three stories did not change the outcome. The audit did not change the outcome. All court cases were dismissed because they had no merit and no evidence of fraud, ”Jackson said.
“If Republicans had won, no voting bill would have been introduced in this legislative session,” he added.
Another bill that was passed by a state Senate subcommittee in an online party vote last week tried to stop the absentee vote without excuse in the state after a record turnout of absentees was seen in November. .
In addition to restricting the days residents can vote earlier in the state, HB 531 would also limit when a voter will be able to request an absentee ballot and when election officials can send them to voters, according to Georgia Public Broadcasting (GPB).
Old President Trump
Donald Trump, a former Florida agent arrested after live streaming from inside the U.S. Capitol during a breach, the FBI says Schumer says he is working to find votes to confirm Biden’s OMB selection. and other Republicans have widely called in recent months to repeat unfounded conspiracy theories about widespread election fraud following their defeat in November.
“It was these same Republicans who passed these laws a few years ago that provided for absentee voting, what provided for early voting, what provided for the ballot box,” Jackson said. “These same Republicans, when it worked for them, nothing happened to them. But now that blacks and people of color use 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’ measure a “massive voter suppression law” during the organization’s hearing on the legislation Monday and said “they left the voting rights organizations and election officials on both sides of the aisle with only a few hours to review. “
Holley added that it is part of the reason why Fair Fight Action “has decided to hold daily hearings so that members of the public, members of the press and lawmakers in Georgia can have the opportunity to understand what this bill contains. “.
The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc. and the Southern Poverty Law Center also testified before the Special Electoral Integrity Committee of the Georgian House of Representatives, where HB 531 was presented on Friday, according to GPB, to express opposition “in the strongest possible way” terms ”To measure.
The bill, the groups said in testimony, is “prepared to create unnecessary barriers and burdens on voters that disproportionately affect racial minority voters, low-income people, the elderly, rural people, people with disabilities and / or students, instead of encouraging ways to expand political participation after the growing participation of Georgians in elections ”.
The measure, they noted, also “bluntly” comes “following a historic election in which black Georgians made up 30.3% of absentee voters, and a total of 36.7% of postal voters were Georgians. of color, where more than 17% of absent voters were under the age of thirty-five.
In addition to opposing the provision of the bill that limits the days on which Georgia residents can vote earlier, the groups also focus on another provision that proposes photo identification requirements for absentee voting. – a practice that, according to them, has had a “disparate impact” on “historically unauthorized groups”.
“If approved, the prospect of these provisions, combined with the DNI with photograph requirement, poses an intolerable and discriminatory barrier to accessing Georgia voters’ ballot boxes, especially for black voters,” the groups added. .