GA Voting Rights Violations Story Update

Earlier this week, I posted a note about the outrageous attempt of a local group to deny 909 Georgia Southern University students the right to vote in this past Tuesday's elections.

Election day has come and gone, but the story continues. The local Board of Registrars is now reviewing the challenges and will decide whether or not the students - those who voted despite the threats and police presence - will have their votes counted.

Today the Atlanta Constitution Journal published an excellent column on the subject from Laughlin McDonald , director of the ACLU's Voting Rights Project. McDonald notes the illegality of these challenges and the disconcerting similarities they have to other attempts at targeted disenfranchisement in the U.S. Below are a few excerpts:

"State law requires such challenges to 'specify distinctly the grounds of the challenge.' Far from being distinct, the 909 challenges used an identical form, with a blank space for filling in the names of individual voters, and identical language...

"This kind of tactic is nothing new. After a federal court invalidated the white primary in the 1940s, Georgia gubernatorial candidate Eugene Talmadge challenged blacks en masse in more than 30 counties, and an estimated 15,000 to 25,000 were purged from the voter rolls...

"Although contrary to the beliefs of the ironically-named Statesboro Citizens for Good Government, the right to vote occupies a special place in our constitutional system. There are more constitutional amendments — the 1st, 14th, 15th, 19th, and 26th — guaranteeing the right to vote than any other civil right we posses as Americans, not to mention a myriad of state and federal laws protecting voting...

"Unfortunately, our nation has a long and shameful history of targeting various groups and denying or suppressing their right to vote. The South disfranchised blacks in the aftermath of Reconstruction through such devices as literacy tests, poll taxes and durational residency requirements...

"As for Statesboro, the public must see this maneuver for what it is - another shameless attempt at undermining voting rights in this country. The board of registrars should reconsider its ill-determined finding of probable cause and dismiss the pending challenges.

"That would actually bring good government to Statesboro's citizens."

For more information on this story, visit the National Campaign for Fair Elections.