OP-ED: The U.S. Supreme Court declared open season on Georgia’s voters

This column was originally published by the Georgia Trust For Local News.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais gutted the Voting Rights Act (VRA) and has given a green light for politicians in Georgia and across the South to redraw maps that silence Black and Brown voters before a single vote is cast.

The Voting Rights Act ended one of Jim Crow’s most effective anti-voting tools: voting maps that ignored voters. Let’s start with some history. After the Civil War, Congress adopted the 13th and 14th amendments to end slavery and guarantee citizenship. We talk less, though, about the 15th Amendment. It mandated that no state nor the federal government could use race to stop Black people from voting. Over the next decade, Black men got elected to mayorships, state legislative bodies and Congress. But Southern states, with the help of a racist, vengeful president and complicit Supreme Court, put a stop to that progress. Enter Jim Crow — a series of state and local laws that included anti-voting provisions. 

Suddenly, all voters faced poll taxes and literacy tests, which were technically “race-neutral” or “color-blind” as they say. Yet, Black Southerners had been barred from learning to read and make a fair wage, so they couldn’t pass the tests or pay the toll. White Southerners also faced illiteracy and poverty, but those crafty legislators and governors had a cure: grandfather clauses that said the laws don’t apply if your ancestors could vote before the Civil War. So race-neutral laws shockingly only affected Black voters. 

Well, as more Blacks gained education and economic independence, the Jim Crow South had to get creative. If they couldn’t block individuals from passing the Herculean gauntlet of impossible tasks, they decided to take another approach. The goal of legislative districts is to ensure that communities of shared interests had a voice — someone to speak up for them. Every community of size or substance is supposed to have a chance to pick a champion. Yet, when Black voters finally had the numbers, the legislature drew lines to dilute their power. Legislators, swearing “race-neutrality” all along, used gerrymandering to divide and conquer. Their racist tactics worked for more than 100 years.

Then the Voting Rights Act of 1965 got wise to the chicanery, and Section 2 of the VRA explicitly made it illegal to draw districts that diluted the voting power of racial communities. When that threshold was crossed, maps had to reflect the growing political power of people of color. The solution was imperfect, but it worked and created accountability.

Communities of color, like rural communities and suburban enclaves, simply want to have a voice to speak up for their issues. Imagine if Cordele had to rely on Atlanta for decisions or Augusta made decisions for Unadilla. All of us are Georgians, but the choices and circumstances we face differ. Difference matters. But with the striking down of Section 2, accountability for fair representation is gone. Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana are carving up districts because they believe Black and Brown voters don’t matter.

In Georgia, Republican politicians are calling on the Legislature to redraw congressional and state legislative maps. Districts that finally gave all Georgians meaningful representation — hard-won through decades of organizing and litigation — are now vulnerable. Representatives who understand the unique needs of the communities they serve could lose their seats by silencing minority voters and hurting their neighbors in the process. 

This ruling didn’t arrive in a vacuum. It comes after decades of deliberate blows to the Voting Rights Act, many of which were struck here in Georgia. Race-neutrality is a fiction — everybody knows this is about who holds power, and how they wield that power against the people.

But we’re not done. Even as legislators rush to redraw maps, Southern communities are organizing, litigating, and refusing to be erased. Georgia, the same state that spent decades suppressing Black and Brown votes, has proven that we can work against this treachery. Our record-breaking turnout in 2018, 2020 and 2021 didn’t just happen in metro-Atlanta. Voters from Randolph to Tifton to Liberty showed up. Those elections proved that when the rules are stacked against us, we don’t quit, we mobilize.

Fighting against authoritarianism has felt remote for a lot of Georgians, but rigging elections is a tool of seizing power. With the Callais decision, everything from school board seats to county commission lines hangs in the balance. To fight back, Congress must strengthen voting protections. Plus, we have work to do here in the Peach State. Voters must demand elected officials stand publicly for fair maps. Civic organizations — and there are many in Georgia — are already mobilizing even when the rules shift beneath their feet. We can also use this moment to remind ourselves of what happens when we fail to have people who show up for us: closed hospitals, skyrocketing utility bills, and under-funded schools, for example. In an election year, we can speak up; but after the polls close, politicians need to believe that we’ll still show up. The proof is in how many of us vote now and engage the day after.

The fight for a multiracial democracy is not over. In Georgia and across the South, it never was. Organize. Insist. Refuse to back down. We’ve got this.

Stacey Abrams is a bestselling author, entrepreneur and host of the podcast “Assembly Required.” She previously served as minority leader in the Georgia House of Representatives.