Georgia Dems wait with fear and angst for help from D.C. - POLITICO

Democrats in the Peach State are trying to beat back voting laws that Republicans passed.

— Sitting outside a cafe here on a warm September day in Clayton County, Alaina Reaves is exhausted, though that may be expected of someone at the frontlines of one of the most pitched political battles in America today.

She’s 32 years old, a member of the Democratic National Committee (the youngest currently serving and the first to represent the county) and, over the past few years, part of the coalition responsible for turning Georgia blue.

Less than a year after voters in Georgia voted for Joe Biden and then two Senate Democrats in runoff elections, the state finds itself once more at the center of the political universe.

Beyond that, Georgia has become a test run for whether Republicans, encouraged by former President Donald Trump’s lies about election fraud and attacks on democracy, will use their new restrictive election laws to consolidate power.

“We're gonna need the money,” said Felicia Davis, an organizer for the Clayton County Black Women’s Roundtable, who sat across the table from Reaves.

The work brings them in and around Clayton County to everyday places, like shopping mall parking lots and grocery stores.

If a review of an election board’s performance — which can be triggered by a request from two state House and Senate members or less, depending on the size of the county — finds evidence of errors or a violation of election law, the board can be disbanded?

Despite finding no evidence of fraud by a state auditor last year, Georgia’s state election board appointed a panel to review the election board in Fulton County, a Democratic stronghold and the most populous in the state.

The announcement set off a veritable fire alarm among voting rights activists and Democratic operatives on the ground, who saw it as the first step toward a possible GOP takeover of the election system.

More than two months since then, the Fulton election officials say they have no insight into the process or the criteria on which the appointed panel is judging them.

Robb Pitts, chair of the Fulton County Board of Commissions, said in late September that he had not been contacted by anyone from the state of Georgia regarding the review and didn’t know what the procedure would be for it.

Aaron Johnson, a member of the Fulton County Election Board, said he still doesn’t know if a timeline exists for the review panel.

For Georgia Democrats, the fear about the new voter laws in their state is not just about the restrictions Republicans have put in place, but the guardrails they’ve ripped out.

They also fear that the new voting laws in Georgia, left unsuccessfully challenged, will erode the country’s democratic foundations.

Already, Republicans who have questioned the validity of Biden’s win are running for local seats in Georgia and a number of election officials who certified the 2020 results have been removed from their positions in parts of the state.

But while Democrats have proposed bills in Washington that would expand voting access, restore key pieces of the Voting Rights Act regarding discriminatory changes to election law, and shield election officials against intimidation and threats, nothing has passed

Pat Pullar, a member of the Clayton County board of elections, said the absence of action on the federal level has made it so that Georgia is effectively “back in the 1950s” when Black people “didn't have the right” to vote

She insists that voting rights advocates aren’t waiting on Washington, that they’re “still going to do what we've been doing for all the years that we've been doing it.” That includes “educating, mobilizing and registering people to vote.”

“Is it too late?” asked Chris Bruce, ACLU’s political director for the state of Georgia