Various left-leaning groups, including the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Southern Center for Human Rights, have endorsed a new initiative in Georgia to restore felons’ voting rights.
Six Georgia state representatives filed legislation to allow felons the right to vote in Georgia. This, according to a press release that the Georgia House of Representatives emailed Tuesday.
“The sponsors of the legislation seek to address criminal legal reform experts’ calls for Georgia to restrict or eliminate felony disenfranchisement,” according to the press release.
“Based on expert testimony before the 2019 Senate Study Committee on Revising Voting Rights for Nonviolent Felony Offenders, these legislators believe that this restriction on voting is rooted in racism and punishes hundreds of thousands of taxpaying Georgians with jobs and families.”
One of the bill’s sponsors, State Rep. Josh McLaurin (D-Sandy Springs) said in the press release that denying felons the right to vote is racist. He also said that the practice disenfranchises people who have left prison and now pay taxes.
The other five sponsors of the bill are:
• State Rep. Bee Nguyen (D-Atlanta)
• State Rep. Gregg Kennard (D-Lawrenceville)
• State Rep. Kim Schofield (D-Atlanta)
• State Rep. Rebecca Mitchell (D-Snellville)
• State Rep. Erick Allen (D-Smyrna)
Nguyen said on her Facebook page Monday that “the carceral system is an extension of slavery in the United States.”
Nguyen also identified the Georgia NAACP, the Southern Center for Human Rights, the New Georgia Project, the SPLC, and the People’s Agenda as backing the legislation.
The Atlanta-based Southern Center for Human Rights, according to its website, “fights for a world free from mass incarceration, the death penalty, the criminalization of poverty, and racial injustice.”
As The Tennessee Star reported in 2019, commentators describe the SPLC as “a hate group on the left” that smears individuals and groups whose politics don’t align with their left-wing ideologies. The SPLC attaches labels such as “racist,” “white supremacist” and “extremist” to people and groups who don’t deserve them.
Dennis Prager, an SPLC target, writing for Investors.com, said “all the SPLC does is politicize, and thereby trivialize, the fight against racism and other evils.”
Writing for The Washington Post, Marc A. Thiessen, said the SPLC smears good people with false charges of bigotry.
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Chris Butler is an investigative journalist at The Tennessee Star. Follow Chris on Facebook. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Vote Sign” by Lorie Shaull. CC BY-SA 2.0.
Interesting. Why should Georgia allow felons to vote? The Democrats have already proven quite capable of stuffing the ballot box and manipulating results?