by Jo Freeman

 

Georgia has become a purple state, which is why a lot more attention is being paid to its efforts to limit ballot access than the 46 other states where restrictive measures have been proposed.  

 

Georgia turned purple only recently, though it was in the past.  Joe Biden won the presidential contest by 12,000 votes, reinforced by the Jan. 5, 2021 special election in which two Democrats won both seats in the US Senate.  The Georgia legislature and the chief executive offices are still controlled by Republicans.  In reaction to these Democratic victories they wrote a state law to make it harder for the Democrats to win again.

 

Before 1964 Georgia was part of the Solid South which could be relied on to always vote Democratic even when it didn’t want to.  Until the New Deal Blacks, when they could vote at all, voted Republican.   The shift by Blacks into the Democratic Party was gradual.  Rev. Martin Luther King Sr. (aka Daddy King) voted Republican all his life and made sure that his two sons did so as well until 1960 when Democratic candidate John F. Kennedy expressed sympathy for Dr. King who was in a Georgia jail.

 

In 1964, Georgia was one of the five Deep South states that voted for Barry Goldwater because he opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act and Lyndon Johnson was its architect.  The Republican nominee for President won nine out of the next 14 Presidential elections. The state continued to elect white male Democrats to be Governor until 2002.  Every one since then has been a white male Republican. Republicans gained a majority of the state Senate in 2002 and the House in 2004.  

 

Georgia elected its first Republican Representative to  Congress since Reconstruction in 1964.  It would be 30 years before Georgia elected more Republican than Democratic MCs.  Georgia currently has 14 Representatives, including 8 Republicans and 6 Democrats. All of the Republicans are white but only one of the Democrats. The first Republican Senator was elected in 1980.  For nine years both were Republicans.  Since January, both have been Democrats.

 

In short, Georgia is becoming purple again but there’s no guarantee it will stay this way.

 

What brought these changes was a combination of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and active organizing of Blacks into the electorate and into the Democratic Party.  

 

It is its purple passion that makes Georgia exceptional among the five Deep South States.  Most of them shifted from blue to red as whites left the Democratic Party while Blacks flocked in.  Court decisions made it necessary to give Blacks some representation but not equivalent to their population.  States drew district lines to curtail the results of voting, not the process of voting.

 

In these states the Black population ranges from 27 to 37 percent.  Georgia is in the middle with slightly over 30 percent. Alabama is represented by six white male Republicans and one Black female Democrat.  South Carolina has one Black male Democrat and six white Republicans (including one woman).  Mississippi has one Black male and three white male Representatives.  Louisiana has four white male Republicans and two vacant seats, one of which usually elects Democrats.

 

Senators Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock won their January 5 special election by 55 and 95 thousand votes respectively.  This was a better margin than Biden’s but not by much.  Blacks cast 32 percent of the ballots; 94 percent went for the Democrats.  Georgia’s rush to make it harder to vote was prompted by the possibility that the Democrats could win again.

 

Shaping the electorate to effect who can vote, and who does vote, is nothing new.   It’s been done since the country was founded.  Only the methods change.  As always, eternal vigilance is the price of a free and fair vote.

 

© 2021 Jo Freeman for SeniorWomen.com