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https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/28/politics/voting-rights-georgia-souls-polls-blake/index.html
Georgia Republicans made two big mistakes when they attacked voting rights
Updated 8:20 AM ET, Sun March 28, 2021
(CNN)By passing one of the nation's most restrictive voting bills, Republican lawmakers in Georgia have forgotten a lesson from the past and are setting themselves up for defeat in the future.
The sweeping bill, signed into law Thursday by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, imposes new voter identification requirements for absentee ballots, limits the use of ballot drop boxes and makes it a crime to approach voters in line to hand them food and water.
Kemp said the law allows Georgia to "take another step toward ensuring our elections are secure, accessible, and fair." Voting rights advocates, though, said it's a thinly disguised and racist attempt to suppress the Black vote.
"No one but Pee Wee Herman believed them when they talked about the 'integrity of the vote,'" says the Rev. Tim McDonald, an Atlanta-based pastor who founded the African American Ministers Leadership Council. His group created "Souls to the Polls," a get-out-the-vote movement among Black churches nationwide. Earlier versions of the Georgia elections bill would have virtually eliminated early Sunday voting, which is popular with Black voters.
"Black folks are not stupid. We know their tricks. We know their motivation,'' McDonald says. "They are the [Ku Klux] Klan in three-piece suits."
MORE ON VOTING RIGHTS
- Biden calls Georgia law 'Jim Crow in the 21st Century' and says Justice Department is 'taking a look'
- Here's why voting rights activists say Georgia's new election law targets Black voters
- It's now illegal in Georgia to give food and water to voters in line
- Georgia's new voting restrictions intensify Democratic push for filibuster changes but Senate realities remain
- Analysis: These two photos show who Georgia's new elections law benefits -- and hurts
What's happened in Georgia is part of a national trend. So far this year Republican lawmakers in more than 40 states have introduced more than 250 bills to restrict voting.
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