40,000 votes here, 40,000 votes there, after a while it could start to add up -- or could it?

ThinkProgress caption: "Dr. Francys Johnson with the NAACP leads an occupation of the Georgia State Capitol to protest voter suppression."

by Ken

Howie has been manning the 2014 voter-suppression beat, which following recent custom has been one of the big stories of the election campaign, or at least it should have been. It matters even more in an election with so many races that are looking so close in states that are so polarized that each side's voter turnout could be the deciding factor.

Nevertheless, despite occasional minor setbacks to the Republican voter-suppression juggernaut -- which seem hardly consequential compared with all the successes -- the effort is going so well that it seems now well established that Republicans get to decide who can and can't vote. It's an impressive accomplishment given the complexity of the machinery involved, which includes all those crooked state secretaries of state plus warriors in the ranks of those cracker-brained judges stuffed onto the state and federal benches for just such purposes.

Take Georgia. (Please!)

There was, of course, a recent hullabaloo about those estimated 40,000 new voter registrations racked up by Georgia activists which somehow don't seem to have shown up on the state's voter rolls. This seemed to be quieted as shocked state officials denied indignantly that there was any such registration shortfall. Yet groups like the New Georgia Project seem to keep finding names of new registrants missing.

This doesn't even seem to have been an issue for another of those judicial geniuses, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Christopher Brasher, in Atlanta, who yesterday, reports ThinkProgress's Alice Ollstein, "denied a petition from civil rights advocates to force Georgia’s Secretary of State to process an estimated 40,000 voter registrations that have gone missing from the public database." Voters missing from the rolls? His honor doesn't seem to have been interested in hearing about it. He thought the petitioners were getting ahead of themselves. Nothing to worry about yet in the judge's mind.

Here's some more of what Alice had to report (links onsite):

Though early voting is well underway in the state, Judge Brasher called the lawsuit “premature,” and said it was based on “merely set out suspicions and fears that the [state officials] will fail to carry out their mandatory duties.”

Angela Aldridge, an organizer with the group 9 to 5 Atlanta Working Women who has been working to register voters for several months, told ThinkProgress she was “furious” when she learned of the outcome: “That impedes people’s rights,” she said. “People need information before they go out to vote and they don’t even know if they’re registered or not. They were discouraged, upset, kind of frazzled, not really knowing what was going on. What can you even say to people who want to vote but possibly can’t? They might get disengaged and say, ‘Why vote? It doesn’t matter.’ It’s really disheartening.”

The New Georgia Project, who spearheaded the voter registration drive and brought the lawsuit against the state, vowed Tuesday to “continue to pursue all legal avenues available.” But with the election mere days away, there may be little remedy for the tens of thousands of people who submitted all necessary documents, but have still not received a registration card. Four of those impacted voters were present at the court hearing, but were denied the opportunity to testify.

Dr. Francys Johnson, President of the Georgia NAACP, who represented the 40 thousand voters in the court, called the ruling “outrageous.”

“All in all – a republican appointed judge has backed the republican Secretary of State to deny the right to vote to a largely African American and Latino population,” Johnson wrote in a press release.
On Monday, dozens of Georgians occupied the Secretary of State’s office to demand he meet with them and explain what happened to the tens of thousands of missing registrations. At that protest, in which eight activists were arrested, former American Government teacher and civil rights lawyer Marsha Burrofsky told ThinkProgress she suspects foul play.

“When we started registering people this spring, people were saying, ‘You know, I registered six months ago, but I haven’t gotten anything yet!’ We thought that was strange,” she said. So we sat down with our list of registrations and checked, and about 20 to 20 percent were not showing up. We truly don’t know where things stand with them.”

Burrofsky said the people she registered in Dunwoody, Georgia, a more affluent and conservative community, did show up in the system, while those in more diverse and low-income communities in DeKalb County mysteriously disappeared.

“It just hadn’t occurred to me that this would be a tactic that the Secretary of State could use. I was very naive, I guess. I feel absolutely sick that this election is being stolen,” she said.

With the races for the state’s governor’s mansion and Senate seat too close to call, the missing voters could not only sway the political control of the state, but the political control of Congress’ upper chamber. . . .

I guess the judge thinks there'll be oodles of time to reconsider the question if it's really necessary -- after the election.

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