Brian Kemp (1963- ) is one of the foremost voter suppressors in the US. In the 2018 midterm elections he is running as a Trump Republican for governor of Georgia against Democrat Stacey Abrams. If Abrams wins she will become the first Black woman ever to become a state governor in the US – and of a red state at that.
Too close to call: With the election just two weeks away, the race is too close to call. In 2016 Trump won Georgia by 5 points – low for a red state.
The battle: The race for governor is merely the latest in a long-running battle between Kemp and Abrams to change the face of Georgia politics by changing who shows up to vote.
Abrams, a state senator, is the founder of the New Georgia Project, which has been working to register Georgia’s 700,000 unregistered Black voters.
Kemp is the secretary of state of Georgia, which puts him in charge of elections – even the one he is running in! He has been busily blocking Blacks from voting:
- From 2013 to 2016 he closed 214 polling places in 53 counties, a fourth of all polling places closed nationwide.
- From 2012 to 2016 he purged 1.5 million people from the voter rolls – twice as many as during the same period before 2012. In 2017 he purged 670,000 more.
- In 2018 he is holding up 53,000 registrations because they do not exactly match the voters’ driver licences, often because of a missing hyphen or accent.
All of that sounds race-neutral and it is meant to. But in practice Blacks and other people of colour are affected more than Whites. Those 53,000 registrations, for example, “just happen to be” 70% Black – in a state that is 32% Black. Oops! Those closed polling places? Mostly in Blacker counties. The purged registrations? Many were people who changed address, something poor Blacks (and younger people) do more often than middle-class Whites.
All this from a man who talks of “outside agitators” like it was still Jim Crow times.
In 2014 Kemp said:
“Democrats are working hard, … you know, registering all these minority voters that are out there and others that are sitting on the sidelines, if they can do that, they can win these elections in November.”
and then two months later he opened a “criminal investigation” into the New Georgia Project itself, accusing it of voter fraud. He found none, but was able to keep it under a cloud of bad press.
In 2012 he did the same to the Asian American Legal Advocacy Center (AALAC) when they asked Kemp why people they registered to vote were not on the voter rolls.
Kemp says he is merely trying to fight voter fraud, yet strangely:
- There is no paper trail to double-check the computers that run the elections. A disaster waiting to happen.
- When Russians hacked Georgia’s election software, Kemp refused help from Washington.
Stranger still, right before the 2016 election Sergei Kislyak, the Russian ambassador, visited Kennesaw State, a small university in Georgia. It “just happens to be” where all the computers that run Georgia’s elections are kept.
– Abagond, 2018.
Update (October 30th): Jimmy Carter, the former US president and governor of Georgia, is asking Kemp to step down as secretary of state, that he should not be overseeing his own election, especially not in a state like Georgia:
“In Georgia’s upcoming gubernatorial election, popular confidence is threatened not only by the undeniable racial discrimination of the past and the serious questions that the federal courts have raised about the security of Georgia’s voting machines, but also because you are now overseeing the election in which you are a candidate.”
More at NPR.
See also:
- Voting Rights Act of 1965 – gutted in 2013.
- voter suppression
- Southern Strategy – why most Whites vote Republican and most Blacks vote Democrat
- The midterms
- Russiagate update
- Russian hackers
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Abagond 
I hope she beats the crap out of him.
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everyone should be able to own the firearm of their choice sorry canada etc
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“Stranger still, right before the 2016 election Sergei Kislyak, the Russian ambassador, visited Kennesaw State, a small university in Georgia. It “just happens to be” where all the computers that run Georgia’s elections are kept.”
Don’t be bashful, state what you’re trying to imply. Is the Russian ambassador a computer expert? Maybe he was there to learn how to suppress votes, a time honored USA tradition.
“…two months later he opened a “criminal investigation” into the New Georgia Project itself, accusing it of voter fraud. He found none, but was able to keep it under a cloud of bad press.” Did they sue him?
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The very first commercial of his that I saw… the one with guns, an explosion because he’s “so conservative he blows up government spending” and the big pickup truck to haul immigrants to the border himself… anyway, when I first saw that I seriously thought it was a spoof made by John Oliver to make fun of Southern Republicans!
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Brian Kemp is a fiend. I am hoping Stacey Abrams defeats him.
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everyone should be able to own the firearm of their choice sorry canada etc
Huh?
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Yes his aggressive over masculinity is to hide the fact he is indeed a covert buttfiend.
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@ v8driver
Totally disagree.
Civilians don’t need military hardware.
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Historian Carol Quigly wrote that the primary reason behind the revolutionary wars succes was that for the first time in history of mankind the populace had the same kind of fire power as the military. Cannons and muskets.
Today the State has by far the greatest monopoly on violence. Drones, Orwellian surveillance, military vehicals donated to police departments and SWAT teams. Add the FBI, Homeland Security, ATF and privileged police.
If you take assault weapons away from civilians it will make it easy for the fascist State to round people up and control them.
Freedom is something you have to fight for and defend with force otherwise you will never gain it and loose it.
Never forget the first gun control laws were meant to keep black men from owning guns. These same laws today are used to justify stop amd and frisk and send non violent black men to prison.
If every black family in the U.S. had an assault rifle nobody would mess with black communities and those communities would get rid of those individuals who kill indiscriminately.
Mexico has plenty of communities that self police and have driven out both the police and the drug cartels. Some are run by elders and its illegal to vote because politicians mean corruption.
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Interesting take on gun control, or lack thereof.
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@ MJB
“Mexico has plenty of communities that self police and have driven out both the police and the drug cartels. Some are run by elders and its illegal to vote because politicians mean corruption.”
For all that it has gun control, Canada seems far higher on all standard-of-life indices than Mexico, including human rights. How is the freedom of people in Canada being curtailed?
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@ michaeljonbarker
While you make a cogent hypothetical argument, the facts on the ground are quite different. The ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) gun laws are interpreted to empower only White citizens. Black citizens who attempt to use those same laws are subject to negative sanctions such as:
Unequal prosecution: Marissa Alexander’s attempt to use the Stand Your Ground law in Florida was rejected and she was jailed for years. Yet, there are several cases in Florida where White men have instigated situations, killed Black people and then successfully used the Stand Your Ground defense.
Let us not forget that many rightwingers applaud White men in Idaho walking around in grocery stores with holstered glocks. Yet, when the Black Panther Party carried guns to the California State Legislature in the late 1960s, gun laws permitting open carry were swiftly changed.
Death: When Philando Castile told a cop about his concealed carry permit, he was summarily executed on the spot.
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2016/07/08/philando-castile/
In short, a reality of “every black family in the U.S. had an assault rifle [and therefore] nobody would mess with black communities” will not happen in a society that is built on rabid White Supremacy.
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@ blakksage
Comment deleted for referring to people as animals.
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V8driver why do you keep trolling ?
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Afrofem the Michelle Alexander case is a farce, she fled to her garage and grabbed her firearm and shot into the ceiling as she tried to fire upon her husband. This was no ‘stand your ground’ case.
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@Cherry Boy: First the lady’s name is Marissa Alexander Not Michelle. And get your head out of your hind parts and learn the facts. Stop engaging in head a$$ery and trolling.
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@ Mary Burrell
It’s like CB didn’t bother to read the news accounts. SMH!
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Mary, I am not trolling, go read the case. She relinquished her duty to not retreat, by retreating.
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@TeddyBearDaddy
What’s a “covert buttfiend“?
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Afrofem. I am not disagreeing with what you are writing. As of right now leagally many blacks can go out and buy the same kind of guns that whites do. I am saying that they should anyway knowing it is dangerous when it comes to interaction with law enforcement.
If assault wepaons are banned white people are not going to turn them in. Most guns are not registered. Gun control will not stop mass shootings.
@Solitare. I believe Canada has more strict gun control then Mexico. People can possess assault rifles there too but it is quite a process.( I am not opppsed to a stricter process here in the U.S.)
Mexico has lost the rule of law in many places. So while assault rifles are illigal there it not a law that gets enforced. Most guns in Mexico come from the U.S.
Vice has documented both guns in Canada and Mexico for more info.
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“If every black family in the U.S. had an assault rifle nobody would mess with black communities and those communities would get rid of those individuals who kill indiscriminately.” – MJB
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, violent crimes in most instances fall along racial lines against their own people. This includes white Amerikans as well. But in Amerika, it has always been NOT much of a so secret agenda or a tool of white supremacists. This trope of an idea is further skewed by certain news conglomerates, like Faux News, to push the unfounded idea that all or most so-called Black communities are riddled with violence. That’s not true.
Moreover, and for the sake of argument, your position is clearly in line of with that of the thinking of white supremacists. I’m not saying that you are of such a detestable group of people but your comment alone says something else. And to follow along with your suggestion of: “every black family in the U.S. had an assault rifle nobody would mess with black communities,” comment.
“White supremacists frequently like to manipulate crime statistics in order to claim that nonwhite minorities, particularly African-Americans, are far more crime-prone and the source of most violent crime against whites. Indeed, it is a core belief that this is the case, and many white nationalist ideologues — including politician and pundit Patrick Buchanan, Jared Taylor of American Renaissance, and the Council of Conservative Citizens — all have made considerable hay out of proffering “studies” laden with risibly bad statistics and other evidence to make their case.”
https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2017/10/23/white-supremacists-favorite-myths-about-black-crime-rates-take-another-hit-bjs-study
My question to you is: Should all Whites, Asians and Mexican communities or head of household also be in possession of assault rifle(s) for protection against people of their own kind that “kill indiscriminately, and not just so-called Black people?”
Consequently, according to the FBI’s statistics relative to violent crimes, white people commit far more crimes against their own people, more so than any other group. But yet, you failed miserably to mention anything regarding white on white crime.
And to give you a quick synopsis of the FBI’s 2016 arrest data, whites were arrested a combined total of 5.8 million arrests. Blacks combined total arrests was 2.2 million times for criminal offenses.
Additionally, there were 18,606 incidents of rape. Whites committed or were arrested for 12,571 of them. Blacks either committed or were arrested 5,412 for the same offense. Here, the number of rapes that whites were arrested for doubled that of what Blacks were arrested for.
But of course, those that watch or get a daily dosage of either FAUX News and frequent white supremacist websites would have you believe otherwise.
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2016/crime-in-the-u.s.-2016/tables/table-21
Remember, this doesn’t include mass shootings like the one in Las Vegas, Columbine, Charleston, Sutherland Springs church in Texas, Parkland FL. high school or the plethora of other school shootings. And again, young white men commit the vast majority of the school campus violence as well, if not all of them.
Indeed, your argument that Black people/communities need to arm themselves against those who “kill indiscriminately ” or prone to rape, is as actually a figment of your imagination, including those ragtag white supremacists as well.
Selah!
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@ michaeljonbarker
My primary concern if Black communities were to arm themselves en masse, is how those actions would be interpreted and what the response would be from the other ethnic groups in the USA.
Historically, Black people in this country have been subject to intense surveillance. In the Northern states during the 1700s, that scrutiny included laws that forbade:
☛ buying provisions in market
☛ carrying a stick or a cane (a common practice for men at the time)
☛ strolling about the streets, lanes, or town commons at night or at all on Sundays
☛ breaking street lamps
☛ any black person hitting a white person
Punishments for violation of these laws ranged up to 20 or more lashes, depending on aggravating factors.
The Southern states scrutinized and controlled Free Black and slave populations with informants, slave patrols in the countryside and armed patrols in the cities (like the notorious Charleston City Guard who roamed Black Charleston, SC with guns and bayonets).
➭➭➭➭➭➭➭➭➭➭➭➭➭➭➭➭➭➭➭➭➭➭➭➭➭➭➭➭➭➭➭➭➭➭➭➭➭➭➭➭➭➭➭➭➭➭➭➭➭➭➭➭➭
In the present day, Black communities experience constant surveillance and intrusions by police in the streets (whether Black folk are standing, walking or driving. selling water or barbecuing), in schools and homes. The purpose of that scrutiny is to control the movements of the Black population and identify trends and neutralize potential leaders.
Black people arming themselves in the way you described in your comment would cause fear and panic among White people and their allies. There would certainly be an intense response from the White Powers That Be, as well as average White Americans. That response could include legal restrictions on guns for Black people, increased media fear mongering and (in a worst case scenario), violent White mob actions against Black communities.
I think mass arming of Black households would have the opposite effect that you described. Other people would not mess with Black people less, they would mess with Black people more.
As to your assertion that a heavily armed Black community could result in “those communities would get rid of those [Black] individuals who kill indiscriminately”, my only thought is how is the working out for White communities in light of the constant mass shootings they endure?
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@ blakksage, comment deleted for referring to people as animals. – Abagond
You may continue to delete and/or censor my posts all you want, but there is no way to speak the truth and NOT offend white people. My previous post was consistent with their historically collective behaviour. Even to today, there is no change for the better concerning white people’s conduct, especially towards so-called Black people.
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Update: Jimmy Carter, the former US president and governor of Georgia, is asking Kemp to step down as secretary of state, that he should not be overseeing his own election, especially not in a state like Georgia:
More:
https://www.npr.org/2018/10/29/661727605/jimmy-carter-calls-for-georgia-secretary-of-states-resignation-in-personal-plea
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Kemp is terrified. Not.
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