police_door to door
© Unknown
Hancock County, Georgia Seemed to forget that this is 2016, and not the Jim Crow south anymore. More than 180 black residents of Hancock County were visited by sheriff deputies, with paperwork in hand, to demand that residents either appear in person to prove they have the right to vote or be purged from the rolls.
Last week, for instance, a U.S. appeals court struck down a North Carolina voter ID law that it said was specifically designed to lower turnout among black voters. And now the New York Times is reporting that a town in Georgia is using its police department to challenge the rights of its black residents to vote.

The 180 black residents make up roughly one fifth of Sparta's total registered voters, the Times notes.
A lawsuit has been filled on behalf of the black residents of Hancock County. The plaintiff's in the case claim that this was a tactic by the county and county attorney Barry Fleming, to suppress the black vote and help white candidates win upcoming elections.
"The allegations that people were denied the right to vote are the opposite of the truth," said Fleming, who claimed these policies were meant to restore order to the voting process after a period of supposed corruption. "This is probably more about politics and power than race."
Whether it was about race or the politics of the people they harassed, this was an abuse of power by the sheriffs, by the county election board and everyone else involved. The mere fact that the sheriffs came to the doors of these people and demanded that they prove they can vote, this will keep black voter turnout down.
"A lot of those people that was challenged probably didn't vote, even though they weren't proven to be wrong," Marion Warren, a Sparta elections official, told theTimes. "People just do not understand why a sheriff is coming to their house to bring them a subpoena, especially if they haven't committed any crime."
Sending law enforcement to the doors of black residents, in the deep south, just shows that the power structure hasn't given up on their " old ways." This harkens back to days of Medger Evers and other fighting and dying to register black voters. I hope the residents of Hancock County come out and vote these beyond corrupt officials out of office