In majority-Black Georgia county, voting in Senate runoffs is more about fight to vote than right to
Mayfield, Georgia (CNN)Johnny Thornton stood on his sprawling catfish farm, once a symbol of empowerment in this majority Black county, and explained how the local election board once tried to strip him of his right to vote.
In 2015, after a failed attempt to shutter almost every polling location in a county three times the area of Atlanta, the Hancock County Board of Elections and Registration tried to remove 174 voters, almost all of them African American, ahead of a Sparta city election. The board even sent deputies to homes, summonsing voters to prove eligibility.
The city's roll at the time included only 988 voters, so it meant about one in five potential ballots. The majority-White board ultimately clipped 53 residents from the rolls.
Had Thornton and others not fought back, suing the BOER in federal court -- which in 2016 restored most voters to the rolls -- many county residents could have been disenfranchised, he said last month.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/04/politics/georgia-hancock-county-right-to-vote-senate/index.html
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