For months, Georgia voting rights advocates and faith leaders warned that a new state law would drastically suppress minority turnout and pleaded with Congress to enshrine protections.
But with no signs of progress in President Biden’s push for voting rights bills, those groups are now confronting a new challenge: How to turn out voters despite the restrictions passed by state Republicans in the wake of Biden’s upset win there.
On Tuesday, more than a dozen voting rights groups, spearheaded by faith leaders, will gather at The KingCenter in Atlanta to rally their organizations in the run-up to the midterms — and plot their strategy to outmaneuver new regulations they see as limiting access to the ballot. The groups, which are mostly nonpartisan but also aligned with Democratic efforts, aim to show GOP leaders that their work will continue in the face of the law….
The summit in Atlanta comes as Democrats have failed to advance voting rights legislation, a key campaign promise for Black voters who helped deliver Georgia. Since then, Republicans in numerous states have enacted restrictive new voting laws, driven in part by false claims of a stolen 2020 election from allies of former president Donald Trump.
Biden won Georgia by almost 12,000 votes, the first time a Democrat has won the state since 1992. Democrats also won two Georgia Senate runoffs in 2021 that handed Democrats unified control of Congress for the first time in a decade. Consequently, many Georgia voting rights activists are dismayed at Democrats’ lack of progress in expanding access to the ballot, especially among communities of color.