They’re doing it again. Just as expected.
With early voting underway, Georgia Republicans are trying to paper over their deliberate attempts to make it more difficult for groups who often favor Democrats to vote.
Gabe Sterling, a top official in the Georgia secretary of state’s office, is leading this disinformation effort.
I wrote about it last week: Sterling, starting with the first day of voting, has touted relatively high early voting numbers as evidence voting is and will be seamless in Georgia for this year’s midterm elections.
He’s essentially asking: How can we be stopping people from voting if so many people are casting ballots? And Republicans are relying on mass stupidity to make this argument.
It’s as if the current voting rate couldn’t possibly be higher. As if we haven’t been watching Sterling’s party engage in racist gerrymandering and pass a suite of voting laws so restrictive, it’s under investigation by the Justice Department. For the record: Even the conservative-tilted Supreme Court has sided with a federal judge who ruled parts of Georgia’s voting system disadvantage Black voters.
But Sterling put on his indignant face Thursday in a FOX Business appearance, scoffing at allegations Georgia’s demonstrably discriminatory voter suppression law is racist. He became downright blustery at one point.
“Frankly, I was getting more and more pissed,” he said of the claims from Democrats and others who’ve compared Georgia’s voter laws to the Jim Crow era. “I was getting angry every time I heard it, because I knew this law was protecting people’s rights to vote.”
My initial response?
Some of the measures Sterling touts as “protecting people’s rights to vote” — like new voter identification requirements that may function as an effective poll tax — are methods the DOJ listed in its lawsuit as potentially discriminatory to Black voters. Which fundamentally gets at what his state party is doing: restricting the right to vote while maintaining a veneer of legitimacy.








