Black election volunteers testify to a substantial upsurge in threats of violence as an incessant stream of misinformation from embittered Republicans continues to clog the airwaves.
The constant echoing of “corruption” from White House mouthpieces has had a dangerous residual effect, inspiring extremists to employ various intimidation tactics to dissuade people from casting votes.
The strategy is working to some degree. Officials, volunteers and activists are fearful that overzealous right-wingers’ threats will actualize during the Georgia runoff election on Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2021.
A spike in disinformation about the election process in Georgia has prompted online threats against officials, poll workers and campaign staff that activists fear could lead to real-world violence. https://t.co/rPPJgPCxjm
— ABC News (@ABC) January 4, 2021
“This weekend, I received several calls from pastors and others who have received threats regarding Tuesday’s runoff election,” said Bishop Reginald T. Jackson, according to NewsOne. Jackson is the presiding prelate of the Sixth Episcopal District, which encompasses more than 500 churches in the state of Georgia and boasts 90,000 parishioners. He also spearheads “Operation Voter Turnout,” a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that seeks to motivate the electorate to register and cast their votes.
Other state officials also have voiced their concerns.
“Fulton County has received multiple bomb threats at polling areas, and this is getting out of hand,” Jordan Fuchs, Georgia’s deputy secretary of state, told ABC News. “It’s one thing to have your opinion out there. It’s another to wholesale make up information about voting machines, staffers — the whole nine yards. It’s just, there’s something wrong. There’s something wrong when leadership cannot come down and say threats against election officials are wrong.”
Evoking the Jim Crowism era when voter suppression machinations included violence in the South, White supremacists are smoldering with anger by the record-breaking Black voter turnout in Georgia in 2020. This latest bit of info about first-time voters from NBC News can’t be of much comfort to them either:
Per @NBCNews : Approx 113k voters who did not vote in the 2020 general election voted have voted in Georgia runoff election so far.
Of that total, 30% are between the ages of 18 to 29 and 40% are Black.
— chris evans (@notcapnamerica) January 4, 2021
