Dr. Carol Anderson, Robert W. Woodruff Professor of African American Studies and Associated Faculty in the History Department, recently wrote an opinion piece in Democracy Docket, a news platform focused on voting rights and elections in the courts. Anderson’s article, “Intimidating Voters Is Nothing New in Georgia, It’s Just Easier Now,” outlines the range of voter intimidation efforts that took place in Georgia in the 2020 election and which have been made even easier through new laws in the lead up to the 2024 election. The article offers historical context, as well, as Anderson draws parallels to earlier eras of voter suppression. Read a quote from the piece below along with the full article.

“In December 2020, just weeks before a historic U.S. Senate runoff election in Georgia, True the Vote, a Texas-based right-wing group, challenged the voter registration of more than 250,000 Georgians, ‘offered a $1 million bounty and recruited Navy SEALs to oversee polling places,’ hoping that enough Americans would be purged from the rolls less than a month before a key election that would decide control of the Senate.  

“This was not the first time that the organization pulled a stunt like this. True the Vote had already received brushback pitches from the Department of Justice and authorities in Ohio, Texas and Wisconsin for submitting unverifiable lists, demanding the removal of voters even though a federal election loomed and intimidating voters. Indeed, True the Vote suggested that intimidation was key to its strategy. Earlier it had told its volunteers that the goal was to give voters a feeling ‘like driving and seeing the police following you.’ In short, to replicate the terror of ‘Voting while Black.'”