Joseph Sabino Mistick: Georgia's assault on democracy

Of all the low-down dirty deeds you can do to anyone, denying them a drink of water when they are thirsty is among the lowest and dirtiest. And that tells you everything you will ever need to know about the politicians running Georgia.

Among recent election law changes, the Georgia Legislature and governor have made it a crime to give a thirsty voter a drink of water. It’s their way of tightening the screws on poor and Black voters who wait for hours in the hot Georgia sun to vote because the state has reduced the number of polling places.

Still reeling from the Biden presidential victory in Georgia and the election of two Democrats to the U.S. Senate, Republicans have moved to suppress the vote in likely Democratic areas and give the Legislature control over elections.

The law makes it harder for anyone under 65 to vote by absentee ballot, limits access to ballot drop boxes, requires unnecessary voter identification and allows any voter to challenge an unlimited number of other voters.

And now those local election officials who gave an honest count in the last election can be forced out. A commission appointed by the highly partisan Legislature will then run things. This means that the Legislature will pick who will rule on its own election disputes.

There has been outrage over this assault on democracy — a lot of it initially on the drinking water ban — but shame will never stop these guys. Only a pushback from Georgia’s corporate citizens — and a threat to political campaign coffers — will get their attention.

And that has started to happen. Delta Air Lines, Coca-Cola and Atlanta sports franchises have finally realized that these Jim Crow tactics are designed to deny poor and Black voters access to the ballot. Other companies are weighing in, too.

Coca-Cola CEO James Quincey told CNBC, “It is a step backward, and it does not promote principles we have stood for in Georgia around broad access to voting, around voter convenience, about ensuring election integrity.”

Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian told his employees, “The entire rationale for this bill was based on a lie: that there was widespread voter fraud in Georgia in the 2020 elections. This is simply not true.”

Gov. Brian Kemp sang a familiar song, ignoring the voter suppression provisions and claiming the law expands “voting opportunities for Georgians, while also taking steps to further secure the ballot box.”

We learned a lot in the last election about mail-in voting and counting ballots, and some changes are necessary for our elections to run even more smoothly. But that’s not what’s happening in Georgia.

Photos of the bill-signing ceremony show six white men standing over the governor as he signs the law that disenfranchises Black voters, with a painting of the Callaway Plantation as background. That’s one of many places in Georgia where enslaved Blacks created the wealth and power that these men are now so afraid of losing.

It is the civics version of the terrible pictures coming out of the George Floyd murder trial — the same arrogance of power, the same open dare that we saw on that sidewalk in Minneapolis, challenging anyone to do something about it.