Announcing a Justice Department lawsuit against of Georgia over its voting law, Attorney General Merrick Garland charged that state lawmakers intended to prevent black people …
Announcing a Justice Department lawsuit against of Georgia over its voting law, Attorney General Merrick Garland charged that state lawmakers intended to prevent black people from voting. “Recent changes to Georgia’s election laws were enacted with the purpose of denying or abridging the right of black Georgians to vote on account of their race or color, in violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act,” Garland said Friday at the Justice Department. He told reporters it was “the first of many steps we are taking to ensure that all eligible voters can cast a vote, that all lawful votes are counted and that every voter has access to accurate information.” Republican Gov. Brian Kemp defended the law, insisting it was designed to make it “easy to vote and hard to cheat in Georgia.” The law requires ID for mail-in as well as in-person voting and expands early voting opportunities. It continues to allow voters to use absentee ballots without an excuse, allows observation of ballot counting and bars ballot harvesting. Democrats have cast voter IDs as racist, presuming many black citizens either don’t a photo ID or are incapable of obtaining one for no charge from a county registrar’s office or the Department of Motor Vehicles. However, a Rasmussen national survey in March found that 69% of likely black voters and 75% overall favor requiring voters to present an ID card verifying their identity. ‘In the service of woke progressivism’ Garland was flanked by the head of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, Kristen Clarke, who was described Friday by former federal prosecutor Andrew C.
