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Georgia governor’s race – microcosm for nation’s voting wars

 

Capsule update on November 6th election status:
 
Today’s New York Times headline on the election as the national test of democracy:
 
“Showdown in Georgia’s Governor Race Reflects a Larger Fight Over Voting Rights”
 
“Reports that tens of thousands of Georgia residents, predominantly African-Americans, were placed on a list for further scrutiny have exploded into the Georgia’s governor’s race … Republican backers of restrictions have since found more success in cases before an increasingly conservative federal judiciary.”
 
Another take, in The Washington Post
 
“GOP claims of voter fraud threat fuel worries about ballot access in November”
 
“Nine months after President Trump was forced to dissolve a panel charged with investigating voter fraud, GOP officials across the country are cracking down on what they describe as threats to voting integrity — moves that critics see as attempts to keep some Americans from casting ballots in November’s elections.”  
 
A resulting projection: 
 
“Democrats on Track to Take House If They Turn Out, CBS Poll Says”
 
“Democrats would retake the House of Representatives if U.S. midterm elections were held today, but they need to optimize their get-out-the-vote efforts to do so, according to the results of [a] new CBS election poll … they need voters who haven’t typically showed up in great numbers during recent midterms … That includes younger voters and racial minorities.”
 
 
How did American democracy get to this state of affairs?
 
Some answers can be found in this Mother Jones voting analysis, 
 
“Rigged: How Voter Suppression Threw Wisconsin to Trump”
 
(scroll)
 
“From the passage of the Voting Rights d Act in 1965  to the election of our first black president in 2008, the United States saw a gradual in voting access … But when Republicans took control of 26 state legislatures in the wave election of 2010, they passed a slew of laws making it harder to vote. Twenty-two states have adopted new voting restrictions since then, half of which first went into effect in 2016…
 
“… the rollback of voting protections was aided by the Supreme Court, which in 2013 gutted the Voting Rights Act, ruling that nine primarily Southern states — and cities and counties in six others — with long histories of voting discrimination no longer had to clear new election rules with the federal government. The 2016 election was the first presidential contest in more than 50 years without full protections of the Voting Rights Act.”
 
This, as GOP claims of widespread voter fraud required such rollbacks were discredited:
“Trump voting commission had no evidence of widespread voter fraud, former member says” 
 
If the Democratic Party needs any further stimulus to insure maximum November 6th turnout of its supporters, it might reflect on this ominous Mother Jones prophesy on the denial of Americans’ “most fundamental rights”:  
 
“… with Republicans now in control of both the executive and legislative branches in the federal government and a majority of states, [and the Kavanaugh Supreme Court appointment] that problem will likely get worse.”