Monitor

With Respect to Voting Rights, Georgia Is ‘Jim Crow 2.0’

The state’s precinct closures and relocations prevented tens of thousands of voters from voting on Election Day 2018

On election day Americans vote at the Rothschild Elementary School library, Precinct 116, in Columbus, Georgia on Tuesday November 6, 2018. Photo: Melina Mara/The Washington Post/Getty Images

There’s no doubt about it. A comprehensive analysis conducted by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and two outside nonpartisan statisticians confirms that Georgia’s 8% of precinct closures and 40% of precinct relocations from 2012 to 2018 prevented some 54,000 to 85,000 voters from making it to their polling places on Election Day 2018. It’s a particularly jarring finding considering that these closures and relocations affected Black (traditionally Democratic) voters the most, and that Governor Brian Kemp bested former Minority Leader Stacey Abrams by only 54,723 votes. Though voting rights advocates have long argued that voter suppression influenced the results, this new, clear, and substantial evidence of disenfranchisement proves that the state has regressed decades in voting rights, so much so, it resembles its pre-civil rights era self.

Modern-day voter suppression in Georgia began well before the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in the 2013 decision, Shelby County v. Holder. The state’s voter ID law, one of the nation’s strictest, was codified back in 2005. But the incessant…