Fight to vote: the Georgia organizers who helped mobilize voters
Dear Fight to Vote readers,
Welcome back! I’m Sam Levine, the voting rights reporter here at Guardian US. I’ll be taking over this newsletter from the stalwart Ankita Rao.
After the attack on the US capitol last week it’s easy to forget that Georgia’s nationally-watched Senate runoff races were just a little over a week ago. While it’s difficult right now to think about anything other than what’s going on in Washington, I wanted to begin 2021 by looking at how democracy can work, rather than how it can fall apart. I saw this firsthand in Georgia, where grassroots groups organized to mobilize unlikely voters and worked to overcome severe voting barriers in Georgia, a state that has become an epicenter of voter suppression.
Methodical organizing
I spent the Monday before election day with canvassers from Georgia Stand-Up, one of several civic action groups that spent the weeks before the election getting out the vote. Our day began in a chilly church parking lot in Atlanta, where canvassers, equipped with Dunkin’ coffee and Bojangles chicken biscuits, quickly piled into vans, which were then dispatched into different neighborhoods.
I followed along with one group as they went into a neighborhood in Fairburn, just outside of Atlanta. In the silence of the morning, the organizers flew out of the van in groups of twos and threes and quickly, methodically covered different houses. Their goal that day was to knock on just over 6,000 doors, bringing their total across the state to just over 100,000.
‘So many people are not aware of simple voting information’
Another thing that struck me in Georgia was how much of the canvassing work was teaching people how, exactly, to vote. “It’s amazing how so many people are not aware of simple voting information. They don’t know where to go, they don’t know how to mail in ballots or anything like that, so they get frustrated and they say, ‘You know what, I’m just not gonna vote at all’,” said Lacreasa Acey, a 38-year-old canvasser, on that Monday.
After election day, I spoke with organizers who explained that they’ve devoted significant resources in recent years to helping people painstakingly navigate the voting process. In recent years, they’ve sent people to local board of elections meetings, ensuring voter registrations actually go through, called people at risk of being purged and followed up with people at the polls.
Little time to celebrate
The Democratic victory in Georgia has profound implications for voting rights. With full control of Congress, Democrats could choose to get rid of the senate filibuster and pass legislation that would restore the full protections of the Voting Rights Act and require places with recent voting rights violations, such as Georgia, to have voting changes pre-cleared by the federal government before they go into effect.
But the day after the election, some of the organizers that helped flip the state weren’t celebrating. Instead they watched with horror as lawmakers in Washington continued to object to the election results and a pro-Trump mob raided the capitol.
Felicia Davis, convener of the Clayton county Black Women’s Roundtable, described how her feelings shifted throughout the day.
“I woke up feeling joy, I then went into a state of anxiety, and then finally I ended up horrified,” she said.
Also worth watching…
Republican officials in Georgia spent months debunking myths about voter fraud and other election irregularities, but state lawmakers appear likely to be moving forward with efforts to restrict the vote anyway. Part of the rationale for implementing these measures, they say, is the need to restore confidence in elections.
But it’s worth noting this lack of confidence is something that Republicans have stirred up and is not rooted in fact. As Donald Trump leaves office, one of the most important stories will be following how Republicans continue to deploy the myth of voter fraud to justify restrictions on the right to vote. Until next week,
Sam