It’s 2020, and Georgia is in no better position to hold a fair election than they were two years ago. 2018 was an indisputable display of election fraud. Brian Kemp, was Georgia’s Secretary of State, and a candidate for the office of Governor, running against a formidable candidate, Stacey Abrams, an attorney who served in the Georgia House of Representatives from 2007 to 2017 and served as minority leader from 2011 to 2017. Abrams would have been the first African-American governor, and the first black woman to govern a U.S. state. She might have won had the election been fair. Since 2018 she has gone on to become a voting rights activist and author. She is also said to be on VP Joe Biden’s shortlist for a running mate.
The Republican candidate, Brian Kemp was, as I said, Georgia’s Secretary of State, whose job includes overseeing elections. It was a direct conflict of interest to supervise his own election. Calls came from the likes of former president Jimmy Carter who told Kemp to remove himself from the election board. He did not, because if he had done so he wouldn’t have had the power to disenfranchise 560,000 citizens, which is exactly what he did. He accomplished that by removing 300,000 people from the voter database using methods that included the implementation of a strict “signature matching” rule requiring voters’ registration signature to exactly match their DMV signature.
Did you write out your middle name in one and use an initial in the other? No vote for you. Implementation of that rule was only applied to precincts with primarily minority residents.
Black people make up 30.2 percent of Georgia’s population. Kemp tried to disenfranchise the entire community. Voters were turned away without being offered provisional ballots. Sixty students from Albany State University were turned away without explanation.
Kemp went farther. ”To save taxpayers money, he consolidated polling stations.” That’s a nice spin on his closure of a majority of polling stations in precincts with largely black populations. Voters weren’t warned in advance or told where they could vote.
The polling stations in black precincts that were open had no power cords for their voting machines. Voters waited in line several hours to vote, but many didn’t wait, which was the goal.
Numerous counties ran out of ballots and didn’t have enough provisional ballots. Kemp had to be sued to count absentee ballots he deemed to be invalid.
From the Republican school of accusing others of that which you are guilty playbook, Kemp accused the Democratic Party of attempting to hack voter-registration without citing evidence.
Kemp cheated without shame and is now Georgia’s governor, proving every parent whoever said “cheaters never prosper” wrong.
In the end, Abram’s lost by 55,000 votes making it the closest race in Georgia since 1966.
Fast forward to Georgia’s 2020 primary and special election which was held on Tuesday. The same districts that were without power cords in 2018 had no working voting machines for the first two voting hours. Eventually one was up and running, and then a second.
Voters waited in line for over seven hours. The average wait in white upscale communities was twenty minutes.
Redundantly, there was a lack of provisional ballots. People who requested mail-in ballots but did not receive them were told they couldn’t have another ballot. Poll workers were not trained on the new machines. And again polling stations we’re closed without warning, this time the excuse explaining the “consolidating polling places” was a lack of volunteers due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This problem exclusively affected predominantly black communities.
Georgia spent millions of tax dollars on new voting machines to placate the masses who requested paper ballots. The pricey machines they chose, however, use a touch screen, then print out a paper receipt that does not show who you voted for but displays a bar-code. That receipt is fed into a machine that you hope counts your vote correctly. The “paper” these machines provide is pointless. Experts have warned these machines are easy to hack. That’s what the GOP wants.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, has “vowed to launch an investigation” into Tuesday’s primary election chaos. He’s going to investigate himself.
There won’t be an end to this under tRump’s administration. He himself has said that if everyone votes Republicans will lose. Blatant voter suppression and disenfranchisement is what we can expect more of in November because NOTHING has been done to secure elections.
Lo and behold, Lindsey Graham won the Republican Senate primary in Georgia, advancing to the November election.
Senate Majority Tortoise, Moscow Mitch McConnell has blocked every bill sent his way from the House of Representatives because he knows as well as Twitler that unless they cheat Republicans can’t win. And that’s the reason Republicans will never support mail-in voting or hand-marked paper ballots. The only solution is for every single American to vote.
I’m not sure where I heard this, but someone said that if ”did not vote” had been a candidate for president in 2016, they would have won. That can’t happen again. Bring friends, lawn chairs, a lunch box, and most importantly, stay in line. Sometimes they give out stickers.
https://apple.news/AUPuMwIbqTeGSpvapj4FF7A
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/501928-graham-wins-south-carolina-senate-primary?amp
A lot from Lydia 
This situation is disgraceful.
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