An incredible story:
The “why” is easy to answer: Georgia has roughly 700,000 unregistered black voters. If Democrats could cut that number by less than a third—and bring nearly 200,000 likely Democrats to the polls—they would turn a red state purple, and land a major blow to the national Republican Party.
And it doesn't end there. There's a lot of pushback (if that's even an appropriate word) across several counties:
Under the old Voting Rights Act, Georgia officials had to clear voting changes with the Justice Department, and for good reason: The state had a long history of disenfranchisement, and “preclearance” was a way to pre-empt discrimination or prevent it entirely.
That changed with the Supreme Court’s ruling in Shelby County v. Holder last year,which struck preclearance from the VRA. Now, along with other Southern states, Georgia was free to change its laws and procedures for voting. And it did. That year, in Augusta—which has a large black population—officials moved municipal electionsfrom their traditional November dates, a change with huge, negative effects on turnout. (For a case study, look to Ferguson, Missouri.)