Call it like it is: GOP voter suppression
The AJC’s usually racially alert political coverage fell short with the gullible way its Nov. 16 editorial expressed support for Saturday voting during Georgia’s senatorial runoff.
Republican leaders contended that voting last Saturday violated Georgia’s ban against voting within two days of a holiday. In 2015, that unnamed state holiday the day after Thanksgiving became a replacement for one honoring Gen. Robert E. Lee, leader of the Confederate Army.
As chair of Morehouse College’s journalism department, I was disappointed when your editorial naively characterized the Republicans’ stance as “apparently an unintended consequence of Georgia’s voting laws.”
Instead, the editorial should have identified Republicans’ position as a typical GOP stealth voter suppression attack against Black and brown Georgians. They were more likely to be working poor and minimum-wage earners whose jobs wouldn’t allow them to vote during the week, as Saturday’s long lines at polls proved. They were also, the GOP undoubtedly deduced, more likely to vote Democratic.
RON THOMAS, SMYRNA
Walker leans on his sports credentials in bid for Senate
Good people of Georgia, I have no vote in the upcoming runoff election to determine the second U.S. Senator for your great state, but I do have a question: Had Herschel Walker not played football at the University of Georgia, won the Heisman Trophy and gone on to play professional football, would he be a candidate for that office?
In fact, would you even know who he was without those sports credentials he’s leveraged for public recognition? Setting them aside, consider that Mr. Walker has never held elected office, wildly overstated his resume, inexcusably undercounted his progeny and proven often to be a contradiction of himself.
Adding to those issues, the “policies” he’s espoused are, at best, poorly articulated, if not wholly nonsensical.
You deserve better! Please factor that in when you vote on December 6.
J. STEACH, MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIF.
