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Once again, we see images of infinitely long lines for polling stations in America. This time, it is the state of Georgia that could play a crucial role in this fall’s presidential election. Georgian authorities explain the waiting times by saying that turnout is record. But African-American rights organizations say it’s more of a matter of systematic repression against black voters, who mostly live in big cities where wait times are longer.
The situation is remarkable because Georgia had exactly the same problem during the primary elections in June this year, when black residential areas were also the hardest hit by the voting lines.
Across America, Republicans are getting at the state level, the closing of polling stations and the establishment of new voting thresholds are now criticized. In Florida, the governor of the state Ron Desantis, close to Donald Trump, introduced a controversial barrier for former prisoners, who now have to pay all personal debts in order to vote.
In Georgia’s Cobb constituency, voters had to queue up to eight hours to vote early on Monday.
Photo: Nathan Posner / Shutterstock
In Texas, Republicans have enacted a law that means there is only one ballot box per county. It benefits the countryside, where support for Republicans is strong, but it hurts the big cities, where Democrats are concentrated.
Texas’s smallest constituency has just 147 residents, while Houston’s largest has 4.7 million residents. The controversial proposal was approved this week by a Texas court, where all the judges were appointed by Trump.
In Wisconsin, former Republican Gov. Scott Walker cut the number of polling stations by 90 percent. Ari Berman, one of America’s leading experts on suffrage, said in a previous interview with DN that closed polling places in black areas of the state contributed to Trump’s narrow victory in Wisconsin in 2016.
African American Rights Organizations compares the methods to the so-called Jim Crow laws during the years of segregation in the American South. In 1965, President Lyndon B Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, which would prevent discriminatory voting laws.
But in 2013, the Supreme Court struck down parts of this law. It has paved the way for a nationwide offensive of thresholds, obstacles and methods that critics believe are designed to make voting in precisely black residential areas more difficult.
But in 2013, the Supreme Court struck down parts of this law. It has paved the way for a nationwide offensive of thresholds, obstacles and methods that critics believe are designed to make voting in precisely black residential areas more difficult.
A review by political scientists at the University of Pennsylvania showed that black voters are seven times more likely than white voters to wait more than an hour to vote. According to a federal judge in North Carolina, these voting laws are designed to “punish black voters with surgical precision.”
The states that have received the most complaints about discriminatory voting laws other than Georgia are Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin, all of which may be decisive states in the presidential election.
The constant stream of news headlines and images of chaos at polling stations also runs the risk of having a cumulative effect on American voters, where it strengthens the image of a broken electoral system. Ironically, it can help Trump build public opinion to invalidate the November election result, if they are not happy with it.
70 percent of Americans already say they don’t think the election is fair.
