ATLANTA, GEORGIA—On Tuesday, Judge Christopher Brasher of the Fulton County Superior Court 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.Let's see if I get this straight. This lawsuit is no good because "trust the state officials to do what they're supposed to do"?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.”
Really?
That's the opinion of the court? Remain calm, all is well?
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.Chris Kobach of Kansas is not alone in the running for Worst and Most Evil Secretary of State in the country. Brian Kemp of Georgia is making his case.“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.
Longtime Atlanta resident Atuarra McCaslin with Moral Monday Georgia, who organized Monday’s action, summed up his feelings on the situation. “It’s an unjust thing going on, he said. “Those 40,000 now can’t participate in the voting process, even though it’s their right as citizens. The Secretary of State doesn’t really care about those 40,000 people, who are primarily people of color and youth. Those kids have been waking up politically, and now their voices are going unheard. It’s just not right.”My initial reaction is to say "let the riots begin", but that's just anger talking.
What we must do is to get Every. Single. Person. to the voting booths.
Pull them out of work. Drag them out of bed. Wheel their sick beds. Whatever it takes, get them all into a voting booth.
Because if Republicans win, we may never be allowed to vote ever again.