After a week of ferocious pushback
However. Randolph County, Georgia, is not after all going to close 7 of its 9 polling places.
After a week of ferocious pushback — including two packed town-hall meetings in which residents berated local elections officials, as well as warning letters, threats of lawsuits by civil rights groups and national media coverage — county officials fired the consultant who came up with the plan.
Then on Friday morning, the Randolph County Board of Elections voted down the proposal to close seven of its nine polling locations, saying no changes would be made. The meeting of the two-member board lasted no more than five minutes.
“In the United States, the right to vote is sacred,” the board said in a statement, adding that displays of interest and concern have been “overwhelming and . . . an encouraging reminder that protecting the right to vote remains a fundamental American principle.” It said the board’s only interest was in “making sure elections in Randolph County are fair and efficient.”
Activists and residents applauded the action and said they would continue to meet and share information to make sure their voting rights were not eroded.
What they forgot to kill went on to organize.
For resident Sandra Willis, who lives in Cuthbert, the county seat, the controversy stirred up a painful but proud moment in her family’s history. During the 1950s, her aunt, Charlie Will Thornton, worked with voting rights activists in Randolph County despite threats from officials that she could lose her teaching job in neighboring Terrell County.
When Thornton continued her activism, she not only was fired from her job, but she could not find work in any of the surrounding counties. She ended up working briefly as a maid for a local family before finally landing another teaching job in Meriwether County, about 100 miles north of Randolph County. Thornton worked in Meriwether for 30 years, eventually becoming a principal. After more than three decades, she was able to get hired in her hometown and retired from teaching in Randolph County.
Keep your eyes on the prize, hold on.
Activists also said it was a reminder of the need for Congress to restore portions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which was severely weakened by a 2013 Supreme Court decision. The ruling dropped a requirement that states with a history of voter suppression first seek Justice Department approval before making changes to voting laws and procedures.
Well this Congress isn’t going to do that but the next one might.
Well, well, well.
They didn’t expect that reaction, did they? Isn’t it yet another example of putting things out there, to see how they are received, the way this administration has been doing for a while? If they keep doing stuff that would previously have been unthinkable, they also manage to sneak through stuff which is simply objectionable, like massive tax cuts for the rich and separation of refugee families.
“In the United States, the right to vote is sacred,” the board said in a statement, adding that displays of interest and concern have been “overwhelming and . . . an encouraging reminder that protecting the right to vote remains a fundamental American principle.” It said the board’s only interest was in “making sure elections in Randolph County are fair and efficient.”
Bullshit. They were looking to steal another election, and were caught by surprised with the national spotlight turned on them.
I think it wasn’t the board so much as the campaigner who advised them. One of the previous stories I shared on this reported it’s a systematic state-wide campaign to tell boards they should close non-ADA-compliant polling places. It’s all very underhanded and crappy.
Funny they couldn’t see that it was a bad idea immediately it was presented to them. Funny how they were apparently content to put obstacles in the way of this “sacred” “right” of people before the protests.
They should just do like they are doing with our school. Tell them to make it ADA compliant. Then, if they don’t, find another place.
Since schools are required to be ADA compliant, and many of them have been working to make that happen, just make polling places in schools. Then they will be ADA compliant, and they won’t be in churches where you have to stare at crosses/crucifixes while you vote (because so few of them are obeying the law by taking down their paraphernalia – the one where I vote always seems to have kid’s artwork extolling the greatness of Jesus hanging up – how can you take down kid’s artwork?)
I’m pretty sure the place I vote is not ADA compliant, but no one is pushing to close it down. Oh, wait, my polling place is mostly white, mostly working-to-middle class, and mostly obnoxious. They must be allowed to vote at all costs, even if a handful of people in wheelchairs can’t find their way into the building, and can’t manage to utilize the voting booths, which would be too tall for several people I know who aren’t disabled or in wheelchairs. But they’re white, so the city will make sure they find a way to get their vote…
Virtually all polling stations in Australia are public shools and hence have no access issues whatsoever. Plus, they’re already government property… what excuse does America use to not do this?
I would love to know. A public school was my local polling place years ago, in a different neighborhood in Seattle. Here in my current nabe it was the basement of a small church until they made it all mail-in. It’s beyond me why that’s not universal.
Prior to where I am living now, I have voted in public schools or senior citizen centers; I knew there were polling places in churches, but I never voted in a church before.
The churches step forward and want to do this. I have no idea what they are getting out of it, unless they think some magic juju is going to go into our heads just by stepping into their building and turn us all into Lutherans or Catholics or Baptists or whatever. Voting in a senior citizen center didn’t make me old…I walked out the same age I walked in. Why would voting in a church give them any benefit at all? But they do persist.
I suspect for the government, it’s just somehow easy. The church probably does most of the work. At a school, the people who are there as employees or students have other responsibilities than looking after voting, but women’s groups at churches volunteer for almost anything. No one has to look too far for people to help. That would be my main guess as to why churches are so popular as polling places, but I don’t know that.
FWIW, some school districts and some parents don’t like having schools used as polling places because of security concerns (from a bunch of adults entering the school and potentially wandering around), a knock-on effect of school shootings. So many districts try to avoid it if they can. In a few states, including CA and IL, schools are allowed to close (e.g., for teacher training or in-service) on election day to address this concern.
#9
Your post baffled me, why would schools be disrupted at all? And then I realised: American elections are held on weekdays what the fuck.