Last fall, James McWhorter was summoned before the DeKalb County Board of Elections to defend his right to vote. This wasn’t his first such ordeal. Years ago, a traffic felony had stripped him of his voting rights, which he painstakingly restored after 15 years by obtaining a pardon.
This time, McWhorter became one of thousands ensnared by a mass voter-registration challenge orchestrated by conservative activists. These challenges, often based on dubious claims, force individuals to prove their eligibility to avoid having their registrations revoked. McWhorter, who had registered to vote in 2008 after serving in the Army and overcoming homelessness, found himself targeted because he had used his workplace, a barber shop not zoned for residential use, as his mailing address.
Driven by his late grandmother’s lessons on the importance of voting, McWhorter attended the hearing, highlighting the historical struggles of Black Americans for this right. “They endured water hoses, dogs, and lynchings just for the right to vote,” he told the board.
McWhorter managed to retain his right to vote by re-registering at his permanent address. However, many Georgians may not be as fortunate due to new state laws allowing unlimited challenges to voter registrations. These laws, enacted post-2020, have led to fears of widespread electoral chaos.
Georgia’s election landscape has drastically changed since 2020, when attempts to overturn the election results failed. Laws passed by Republicans removed Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger from the state Board of Elections, despite his constitutional duty to oversee elections. This move, seen as punitive for his refusal to manipulate the 2020 results, replaced him and other members with individuals skeptical of the 2020 outcome.
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These changes, coupled with new appointments of election doubters at local levels, threaten to undermine the integrity of future elections. Rather than bolstering the system against unfounded fraud claims, these actions compromise its ability to withstand similar challenges in 2024.
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