Georgia activists ramp up voter turnout efforts to push back against changes

ATLANTA ? Nearly a dozen young men spent hours at Georgia STAND-UP one recent morning stuffing masks, mints and hand sanitizers in care packages for voters who may wait in long lines starting in October.

Across town, workers at The Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda set up voter registration tables at local colleges and senior citizen buildings.

At Clark Atlanta University, organizers with a group called RISE helped register students and collect pledge cards at the historically black college.

To combat what they call voter suppression efforts in Georgia, grassroots organizations aim to register thousands of voters of color urging them to cast ballots early, show up in person and turn out in record numbers so there’s little doubt who the winner is on Election Day.

With Georgia in play in the battle for the presidency, they are determined to help voters understand and navigate what they call the state’s restrictive election changes.

“The way you combat the voter suppression techniques or the barriers that they’re putting in place is having a large turnout,’’ said Helen Butler, executive director of the nonpartisan Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda. “We’re not telling people who to vote for, but we’re telling them to vote, to exercise their power… To do that you’ve got to have a large turnout so there isn’t any question by the election deniers.’’

Former President Donald Trump, a Republican, and Vice President Kamala Harris, a Democrat, have recently campaigned in the state where polls show the presidential candidates in a tight race. The state is key to a win for both Trump and Harris.

“People know that the road to the White House one way or another is in Georgia,’’ said Deborah Scott, executive director of Georgia STAND-UP. “The world is watching Georgia.’’

Georgia back in the spotlight

Local activists aren’t surprised Georgia is back in the national spotlight.

The state was the center of attention in 2022 when Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock defeated Republican challenger Herschel Walker. The high turnout of Black voters, who traditionally support Democratic candidates, is credited with helping Warnock win.

Georgia activists said they have been working for decades to ramp up turnout, which they said also helped Democrat President Joe Biden narrowly beat Trump in the state in 2020.

"This just didn't happen by osmosis,'' said Yolanda Pickstock, legislative and policy director for Georgia STAND-UP. "This was hard work to get us here, so it wasn't any surprise to us that Georgia is in play.’’

Trump has repeatedly falsely claimed he won Georgia in 2020. Election officials, including Republicans, have disputed that.

Attention also shifted to Georgia because of election changes the Republican-controlled legislature adopted in the wake of the 2020 election. Among other things, the changes, signed into law by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, require a photo ID to vote absentee by mail, cut the period to request an absentee ballot and limit the number of ballot drop boxes. They also give more control over local election boards to the state legislature. One provision made it a misdemeanor to give away food or water to voters within a certain distance from a polling site.

In May, Kemp signed another election law that, among other things, shortens the period before Election Day when voters can be taken off voter lists.

Voting rights advocates complain the changes are efforts to tamp down turnout, particularly among Black residents, who make up about 30% of the state’s population.

Supporters of the law have said they aim to protect against voter fraud and boost confidence in the integrity of the election system.

Trump recently threatened to jail election workers if fraud is found in the 2024 elections.

Democrats and Republicans have criticized another change approved by three Republicans on the Georgia State Election Board that requires county investigations of even minor discrepancies between the number of ballots cast and the number of voters in a precinct before certifying the results.

Wendy Weiser, vice president for the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center, called the move “disruptive” and expects it to be rejected in a legal challenge.

"Overturning election outcomes is unlawful no matter who claims what authority, no matter what boards issue what rules, no matter what conspiracy theories people drum up or problems they point to,'' she said. "It's a play for public sympathies to get people to believe in conspiracy theories so that they might be open to anti-democratic actions in the future.”

Still, Georgia voters have easy access to vote by mail, widespread early voting and automatic voter registration, said David Becker, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research. He noted Georgia has one of the highest voter registration rates in the country.

“There are things that reasonable people on both sides might want to change for the better, but Georgia overall does a very good job,’’ he said. “Pick your best most convenient way of voting. Curtain No. 1, curtain No. 2, curtain No. 3. They're all going to be easy. They're all going to be convenient. Georgia is going to count their ballots relatively fast."

"If every state ran their elections like Georgia, we'd be in pretty good shape,’’ Becker said.

'They know what's at risk'

One recent afternoon, RISE organizers sporting T-shirts that read “Youth Wave,’’ approached students walking along the promenade at Clark Atlanta University.

Ebony Brown, the state director for RISE, a nonpartisan group pushing to get young people more politically engaged, stopped a student asking whether she was registered to vote. The student was soon filling out a voter registration form.

“They’re definitely hyped and enthusiastic about voting,’’ Brown said of students. “They know what’s at stake.”

RISE plans to set up voting registration stations at other campuses across the state. It recently hosted “RISE University’’ to train students in civic engagement, including election rules.

‘’We've been fighting on our end to ensure that we are combating decisions being made by election boards to consolidate polling precincts, specifically in rural communities,’’ said Mary-Pat Hector, CEO of RISE. "We've been fighting to ensure that election boards are not purging voters like what we've been seeing them do since 2018 when Stacey Abrams was running for governor, which is a tactic that we're now seeing all across the country.’’

Abrams, a Democrat who ran unsuccessful bids for governor, led a grassroots organization credited with boosting Black voter turnout.

Hector said the group's focus is making sure people, particularly young ones, have information they need to vote.

Tuesday is National Voter Registration Day.

Weiser praised the idea of getting out the vote to increase margins of victory ? but noted that not all wins will be landslides. She said there should be long-term efforts “in Georgia and elsewhere to also build resilience in the public so that they actually do not get duped and are able to actually weed out this disinformation and go to reliable sources like the chief election officials.’’

In the lower level of Georgia STAND-UP’s headquarters, more than a dozen workers spent a recent morning calling people, checking whether they were registered and reminding them to vote. The organization has opened eight regional offices and hopes to hire 300 to 400 canvassers.

“Part of our secret sauce is to be able to knock on doors and talk to people one-on-one,’’ Scott said.

We want to overload the polls'

In her office at the People’s Agenda, Butler took another call ? this time from a local official asking if she could send a team to an event that night to register voters. Butler welcomes even the last-minute requests.

“The idea is to get as many people to turn out to vote” as possible, said Butler, noting that in 2020 and 2022 there were almost 1 million Black Georgians who were registered, but didn’t vote.

The organization has seven offices across the state and is opening another one. It sets up voter registration tables at colleges, high schools, grocery stores and “hot spots.” It’s also ramping up efforts in courthouses and jails.

The organization’s new campaign dubbed, “Overload the polls,’’ urges Black women to show up in person on Oct. 15, the start of early voting, and bring family members.

The group doesn't want voters to rely on the postal service, which it says may be slow to deliver ballots or wait until Election Day, when lines may be prohibitively long.

The women are encouraged to wear Converse Chuck Taylor sneakers and a free T-shirt the organization will provide to those who register. Harris sometimes wears Chucks on the campaign trail.

“We want them to overload the polls,’’ said Butler, adding that she hasn’t seen this much excitement since 2008 when Barack Obama ran for president. “You’re going to see that they (Black women) are going to be like Obama at the polls, really showing up in record numbers. They bring everybody else with them.’’

Contributing: Aysha Bagchi

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: With Georgia back in the spotlight activists push high voter turnout