Carry Smith wrote her PhD thesis on the Voting Rights Act and challenges to the right to vote in Georgia.

Now dig this: Smith, the expert on challenges to voting rights, lost her vote because a Republican vigilante challenged her registration—along with 900 other Savannah voters—until she was forced to make an appearance proving her right to vote at a meeting of the Chatham County (Savannah) elections board. 

Half of the others challenged still lost their vote in this do-or-die battleground.

Adrian Consonery Jr. was also challenged, in this case, by officials in Cobb County, Georgia. The elections officers claimed that the signature on his drivers license “didn’t match” the signature on his ballot. Were these local pols forgery specialists?  No, they were Republicans. No problem, they told Consonery, a student in the middle of his finals; all he had to do was drive to their offices, eight hours away, and re-sign his ballot.

Why were Smith and Consonery targeted? At this point in the Ugliest Election in Memory, you won’t be shocked to learn that Consonery is Black and Smith is of Cherokee heritage. (I’ve reported that America’s Tribal members are the number one target of vote suppression tactics.)

But who knows the motivation of the Savannah vigilante Helen Strahl—who used a Georgia “challenge” statute last deployed in 1946 by the Ku Klux Klan. I tried to speak to Strahl, the self-appointed vote-fraud hunter who attacked Smith and 900 others in this majority African-American city. Was it racism? Or, was it a purely a partisan attack on voters expected to vote for Kamala Harris.

Doctoral candidate Smith is well known in Savannah as the champion of vote registrars—personally signing up more than 15,000 voters and organizing the registrations of tens of thousands of students in the area. Could that have made her a target? (Only a voter can register others.)

This is personal: My own daughter, when a Savannah resident, was refused the right to register on grounds that, as a student, she had no right to vote. Excuse me, but where is that exclusion in the Constitution?

I called Strahl to ask her if she is a racist or just an ignorant, vote-snatching MAGA fanatic. She didn’t return my call. Unfortunately, her listed phones are now disconnected.

For Smith to get her vote back—and save the right of the 900 others—Smith rallied a large posse of incensed citizens to attend a county Board of Elections meeting.  Strahl did not appear.  The challenger’s cowardice was not unexpected. The GOP hit-woman did not produce a shred of evidence to back her attack on voters whom she accused of registering illegally. Overwhelmingly, the challenged were Savannah residents whose only crime was Voting While Black.

“I showed up and argued for myself as a political scientist. I knew that it was against the law for her to do this under a federal law.” Still, half those challenged by Strahl lost their right to vote.

I met Smith while she was shooting three-pointers with local kids attracted to the basketball hoops attached to the Good Trouble bus. The bus is the vehicle for the get-out-the-vote operation organized by Barbara Arnwine. Attorney Arnwine taught at Columbia University law school—but has committed herself these past two months to getting into those neighborhoods, from Pittsburgh to Jacksonville, too often ignored by politicians.

Arnwine, former Executive Director of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights under Law, told me, “It is despicable. It is. Absolutely. And to my mind, is undemocratic. When you think about democracy and the right of every citizen to be able to participate equally in the vote.”

Consonery is now working with Arnwine, spreading the warning about vote suppression trickery and how to respond.

Good Trouble heads-up: Reach Arnwine and her flying squads of attorneys at 866-Our-Vote if you find yourself challenged and missing from the rolls.)

I’m quite proud that Arnwine and Consonery are showing our film, Vigilantes Inc., America’s New Vote Suppression Hitmen, to their young get-out-the-vote volunteers. 

You can see it too, at no charge, at WatchVigilantesInc.com. 

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The Palast crew is in Atlanta covering this battleground state. And battleground it is, with the MAGA-nauts brandishing AR-15s. Can you help out?

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