News

Black Voters Ordered Off Bus Bound For Polls in Georgia

By CBS News

Dozens of black senior citizens in Louisville, Georgia, were ordered off a bus bound for the polls Monday after county officials said the event constituted prohibited “political activity.” Activists called it an “intimidation tactic” in a razor-thin race for governor that’s become engulfed in a fight over voting rights.

Polls show the contest between Republican Brian Kemp and Democrat Stacey Abrams is basically a dead heat. Civil rights groups are suing Kemp for putting more than 53,000 voter registration applications on hold, mostly from minority voters.

Abrams is vying to become the first African-American woman governor in the South. She has accused Kemp, who currently oversees Georgia’s election system, of dropping more than a million voters from the rolls since 2012 and closing polling places in African-American communities. “He is someone who is tilting the playing field in his direction and in the direction of his party,” Abrams told CBS News’ Nancy Cordes. “It is absolutely voter suppression.” The biggest controversy surrounds the new “exact match” law that put the registrations of 53,000 voters, most of them African Americans, on hold because of discrepancies in the way their names are spelled in state databases.

Read the full story: Here

Exit mobile version