Yet those voters would not be deterred.
During the general election, voters set a record for the number of early votes cast in a Georgia midterm election, and on Monday and again on Tuesday they set records for single-day early voting in a Georgia runoff. It is interesting to note that an estimated 35 percent of the early votes so far are from African Americans, a slightly greater figure than their percentage of the population of Georgia.
This is a testament to the fortitude of those voters, because they were the ones targeted by Georgia’s latest round of voter suppression with “uncanny accuracy,” as the Brennan Center for Justice’s president, Michael Waldman, put it last year. Waldman wrote that Gov. Brian Kemp “signed his voter suppression bill in front of a painting of a plantation where more than 100 Black people had been enslaved. The symbolism, unnerving and ghastly, is almost too fitting.”
People who defend voter suppression point to these numbers as proof that their critics are simply being hyperbolic and creating an issue where none exists. But that is the opposite of the truth as far as I can see it. From my perspective, voters are simply responding with defiance to the efforts to suppress.
And yet that defiance might still not be enough to overcome all of the obstacles placed in voters’ way. While those record daily numbers are heartening, they are in part a result of a new Republican election law that cut the number of early-voting days roughly in half. Even with the extraordinary turnout, it is unlikely this year’s early voting will match that of last year’s runoff between Warnock and the Republican incumbent, Kelly Loeffler.
In addition, Republicans have fielded a singularly offensive candidate in Walker, a man not fit for elective office, a walking caricature of Black competence and excellence, as if Black candidates are interchangeable irrespective of accomplishment and proficiency.
The whole time I was waiting in line, I kept thinking about how the wait would have been impossible for someone struggling with child care or elder care, or someone whose job — or jobs — wouldn’t allow for that long a break in the middle of the day.
Also, I voted on an unseasonably warm day. What about those whose only opportunity to vote might be a day when it was raining or cold? The line at my polling place was outside for 90 percent of the time I waited.