It's heartbreaking. Today on the weekly online edition of the Green Grassroots Election Protection Coalition, the well-known and hugely accomplished investigative reporter, author, and filmmaker Greg Palast discussed his forthcoming documentary Vigilante: Georgia's Vote Suppression Hitman.
Produced by Martin Sheen and Maria Florio, Vigilante exposes the new voter law In Georgia (the "Election Integrity Act of 2021," Senate Bill 202) that allows any Georgia voter to challenge any other Georgia voter. So far, one GOP operative has challenged 4,000, another 32,000, and altogether hundreds of thousands have come under this lethal fire. The voting year is crucial of course: there are both gubernatorial and Senate races pitting Democrat Stacey Abrams against Republican Brian Kemp [again*] and Democrat Raphael Warnock against Republican Herschel Walker and Libertarian Chase Oliver.
In this context, Palast's not-for-profit Investigative Fund is nonpartisan; the bottom line is to make sure that the candidate that voters choose takes office. In 2018, among other investigations, he targeted the 2018 match between Abrams and Kemp, which awarded Kemp the victory by 50,000 votes, by exposing and litigating over the hundreds of thousands of other voters purged from the registration rolls who would have put Abrams over the top (see Click Here ).
In Vigilante, says Palast, "I concentrate on Georgia because that is where the vigilante hitmen are most desperate" and where the ultra-right takes its ballot box trickery for a test drive."
"If you can't win elections, arrest the people who are going to vote against you," is how Harvey Wasserman, co-convener of Green Grassroots Election Protection Coalition (a coalition of activists, journalists, and others concerned with free and fair elections), summed up the GOP strategy in Georgia.
There has been absolutely no national press about Georgia's SB 202, which also makes absentee and dropbox voting highly problematic; it is also a felony now to hand drinks or food to people standing in line to vote, even for hours under the hot Georgia sun.
Contrast the silence about SB 202 with the wide circulation of the film 2,000 Mules, produced by True the Vote, a GOP-empowered organization that militates against true election integrity even as it has coopted this term for its own purposes. 2,000 Mules has been viewed by millions all over the country. The focus is mainly on black male voters supposedly committing voter fraud by stuffing ballot boxes and being paid $10 per ballot. Palast compared this film to D. W. Griffiths's Birth of a Nation, which Palast called the "Elders of Zion of Black voting." Vigilante is meant to be an antidote to 2,000 Mules.
Vigilante also exposes lineage Kemp has labored to hide. A "scion of dynasties," he is descended from the families who first brought African slaves to Georgia and earned prodigious wealth descendants continue to enjoy. The text of SB 202 that Kemp signed contained a picture of a plantation. Kemp's family, owners of massive forests in Georgia, does business with Georgia Pacific, a Koch brothers company. Others are stepping into GOP activism as the Kochs withdraw: Paul "the Vulture" Singer, who has been a featured billionaire predator in Palast's previous publications,** and the Bradley Foundation, which has contributed $2 billion to fight against voting rights in Georgia and Florida, among other states. The idea of challenging voters originated with a KKK governor of Georgia, Gene Talmadge, who escaped the FBI by dying before they could indict him.
Kemp also signed a bill outlawing the teaching of critical race theory--against teaching history, as Palast specified. He has lots to hide. A cousin in Virginia openly acknowledges the family's past and is working on reparations.
How does the process of voter challenge work? Voters are supposed to receive a postcard, designed to look like junk mail (remember voter caging?), but they often don't receive one or mistakenly discard it, and hence don't find out until too late that they've been challenged--too late means that they simply cannot vote. And consider this: a voter may be challenged on Election Day. But if you know you've been challenged, you go to a county office, in person only, to prove at a hearing that you are you and reside where you claim to.
What is being done to fight back against this blatant discrimination? Are the Democrats challenging Republicans? Palast dismissed this possibility as worse than ridiculous. Activist organizations will litigate, and educate and otherwise reach out to targeted groups. In 2020, Palast credits attorney and activist Barbara Arnwine with having worked with colleagues to drive challenged voters to county office hearings, enough to have handed over Georgia's hugely contested presidential vote total to Joe Biden. Register and reregister, said Palast, who himself had to reregister when he found himself dropped from the rolls in Los Angeles.
Vigilante offers far more. The public must be informed about machinations that so threaten democracy. What else can be done? Activism and support of organizations fighting back: Black Voters Matter, NAACP, SCLC, and others, including of course the Palast Investigative Fund. The film will be shown first in New York City on October 4 and subsequently in Atlanta, Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Order your copy and donate at Click Here.
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*Kemp was, by the way, secretary of state, that is, in charge of state elections, in 2018.
**And speaking of Palast's "horror role," another prominent figure from his previous investigations, Kris Kobach, of crosscheck infamy, is back in circulation running for attorney general of Kansas, after having lost gubernatorial and Senate races in his state. Less power to him!
