This is appalling enough on its face, but the sheer brass it takes to make this kind of decision right out in the open is testimony to the success that the Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Roberts has achieved at rolling back the hard-won blood-gains of the civil rights movement, a project that truly has been Roberts’s life’s mission ever since he was a young lawyer in the Justice Department under Ronald Reagan.
Under the old Voting Rights Act, gutted by the Roberts Court in Shelby County v. Holder, the decision in which Roberts declared the arrival of the Day of Jubilee, nobody would have dared pull a stunt like this. The pre-clearance provisions of the VRA would have kicked in. The DOJ would have been breathing down their necks within the hour.
According to the latest census figures, Randolph County’s population is more than 61 percent of black, double the statewide percentage.The median household income for the county was $30,358 in 2016, compared to $51,037 in the rest of the state. Nearly one-third of the county’s residents live below the poverty line, compared to about 16 percent statewide, according to U.S. Census figures. The closure of polling places will affect those who lack reliable transportation, the ACLU says. Public transit doesn’t exist in much of the rural county, and 22 percent of the county’s residents have no car. People who currently vote at the polling places that would close under the proposal would have to travel an additional 10 miles to vote, the ACLU says. With no car or bus to reach a different polling location, this predominantly black, Democratic county will not be able to fairly vote, ACLU of Georgia executive director Andrea Young said.
It shouldn’t be this easy to do this kind of thing in 2018. People shouldn’t feel comfortable doing it so plainly in the open. It shouldn’t be such a simple job to dress up the evil ghosts of the past in modern clothes and parade them down the rural highways where Winfred Rembert once broke rocks because he “stole” a gun from a white man who was trying to shoot him. The bastards at least should have to work harder for it.
Article Appeared @https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a22758991/georgia-close-black-polling-places-county/