A month before Election Day, Sabrina German sees herself as an essential worker for democracy. The director of voter registration in Chatham County, Georgia, has been in the spotlight as she struggles to comply with regulations. Major changes to state election rules In this critical battlefield state.
The first three words of the preface, ‘We, the people’, mean that as public officials, we strive to enable the people to make fair choices and voice their voices for candidates. “I’m making a choice,” said the German.
Georgia’s overhaul has several fronts, from the Republican majority on the state Board of Elections to the Georgia Legislature, allowing individuals to file numerous challenges to voter rolls.
German said just one county has filed thousands of objections to voter registrations.
“It doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to figure out the agenda behind some issues,” said Colin McRae, an attorney who chairs the nonpartisan County Board of Registrars (he has served on the board for 20 years). “The names submitted to us recently included hundreds of college students, and it didn’t take much research to find that every college student whose registration was problematic had all attended Savannah State University, (a) historically. “It’s a black college.”
These problems may seem local, but they have national political responsibilities. Former President Trump weighed in on the campaign, praising Republicans on the Georgia State Election Commission. “They are on fire,” he said. “They are doing a great job. The three members. All three are pit bulls fighting for honesty, transparency and winning. They are fighting.”
‘Sunday Morning’ reached out to members of the Georgia State Election Commission who Trump praised. They have long defended their work, with one member saying the controversy over their efforts was “manipulated to fit a different agenda.”
What’s happening in Georgia is just one example of how voting challenges are shaking the country. And the question still remains. Do recent changes to state election laws address the following? really problem? Or is it just politics?
David Becker, a CBS News contributor who directs the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation and Research in Washington, D.C., said: “Right now, our voter rolls are more accurate than ever.”
So what is it that raises suspicions about voter rolls? “We see a lot of claims that elections are based solely on results,” Becker said. “They’re not about the actual process.
“The voter lists are public. They could have contested these things in 2023, 2021, 2019. They’re waiting until right before the election, which tells me they’re not really interested in compiling the lists. What they are really trying to do is set the stage for claims that the election was stolen, perhaps after a candidate lost.”
The 2020 election still casts a long shadow. State officials like Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, are bracing for another contested election.
On January 2, 2021, Raffensperger received the infamous phone call from then-President Trump. Asked if he would “find” the votes to help Trump win.. “What I want to do is this, uh, I want to find 11,780 votes,” Trump said in a recorded conversation. “That’s one more vote we have because we won the state.” .
Raffensperger resisted the pressure. ~ no Certify the 2020 Georgia Elections. When asked whether he would again resist pressure, he replied, “I will do my job. I will follow the law. I will follow the Constitution.”
Raffensperger will once again oversee and certify Georgia’s elections. Asked whether he thought any of the changes proposed by the Election Commission were necessary, Raffensperger responded, “No, not one.”
Raffensperger says voting is safe and secure in Georgia. Asked why election officials keep changing the rules, he said, “I think a lot of people are living in the past and can’t accept what happened in 2020.”
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Carol Anderson, an author and voting rights activist who teaches at Emory University, said: “One of the things about voter suppression is that it always seems harmless, it always seems rational, and that’s not the case. Here’s the situation with voting rights in Georgia: , there’s a huge shift happening in the demographics, so African-Americans. The American population is growing and the Latino population is significantly larger.
“So it’s a power clash between the vision of the new Georgia and the vision of the old Georgia, which is our old ways,” she said.
Sabrina German of Chatham County said the pressure on election workers makes her think about leaving every day. German may be exhausted, but she and Colin McRae say their experiences in 2020 have prepared them for whatever comes next.
McRae said he took it personally when Donald Trump asked the secretary of state to “find” the 11,000 votes that would put him ahead of Joe Biden. “Of course we took it personally. Any criticism of the system is criticism of the individuals who make up that system,” McRae said. “Once again the truth will come out. The truth will triumph.”
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Story created by Ed Forgotson. Editor: Carol Ross.
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