An August 5, 2019, headline on the Yahoo News homepage\nread, \u201cHow a criminal investigation in Georgia set an ominous tone for African\nAmerican voters.\u201d The lengthy article\nwas written by Jon Ward, a former political correspondent at HuffPost. Ward currently serves as Chief Political\nCorrespondent for Yahoo News.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In its August 25, 2014, announcement of Ward\u2019s move\nfrom HuffPost to Yahoo, POLITICO is quoted as saying that \u201cYahoo is in the midst of an effort to turn\nthe heavily trafficked site into a legitimate news organization.\u201d Having read Ward\u2019s story on the Georgia vote\nfraud investigation, it appears Yahoo still has a bit of work to do before\nreaching their goal. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The vote fraud story is\ncentered in Quitman, Georgia (pop. 3,850), a rural community situated on the\nFlorida state line in Brooks County, midway between the Alabama state line and\nthe Atlantic coast at Savannah. In many\nrespects, Brooks County is a throwback to the Deep South of the 1865-1955 era. In 2014, of the 4,556 county residents who\nvoted, 2,903 were whites, and 1,653 were African Americans. All but a few county residents were\nDemocrats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Quitman is the county\nseat of Brooks County, named in honor of notorious South Carolina congressman\nPreston Brooks. As Ward describes Cong.\nBrooks, he was a member of Congress who \u201cinfamously beat Sen. Charles Sumner\nwithin an inch of his life on the floor of the Senate, in 1856, for his\ncriticism of slavery.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
What actually happened,\nand what Ward glosses over, was that Sumner, a Republican senator from Massachusetts,\nwas making a speech on the Senate floor condemning the May 21, 1856 ransacking\nof Lawrence, Kansas, a small abolitionist community, by a force of some 800 pro-slavery\nDemocrats, mostly recruited in neighboring Missouri, a slave state. Several people were killed, the local\nanti-slavery newspaper presses were destroyed, and several buildings, including\nthe Free State Hotel, were burned to the ground. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Shortly after the invasion of Lawrence, Senator Sumner delivered a\nfiery speech, condemning slavery and the denial of Kansans\u2019 right to self-determination\nby pro-slavery Democrats. As he spoke, Brooks\ncrept up behind him and struck him over the head with a cane, knocking him unconscious.\n And while it is fashionable today for\nleftists to attack statues and memorials of noted American patriots, of all\npolitical persuasions, none have seen fit to remove the plaque honoring Preston\nBrooks in Quitman, Georgia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Quitman vote fraud controversy began in the early morning hours\nof December 21, 2010, when Nancy Dennard, the only black member of the Brooks\nCounty school board, was arrested at her home in Quitman and taken away in\nhandcuffs. A number of Dennard\u2019s African\nAmerican friends and political allies were also arrested. In all, the authorities arrested a total of\n12 people, charging them with 120 separate felonies. As Ward describes the controversy, \u201cTo Dennard\nand her allies, who became known as the Quitman 10+2, the reasons for their\narrests were simple. They were black\ncandidates who won an election in the Deep South, upsetting a white-dominated power\nstructure.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
That assessment is only partly true. Yes, Dennard and her political allies had\nupset a 145-year-old power structure that had been run by whites Democrats since\nthe close of the Civil War. What Ward\nfails to explain is that, in the process of upsetting that old power structure,\nlaws had been broken. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ward tells us that the Quitman case \u201cprovided fodder for\nRepublicans around the country who argued that voter fraud is a significant\nproblem, despite a lack of evidence of any widespread or large-scale examples.\u201d That denial is right out of the Democratic\nParty playbook. The truth is, vote fraud\nis such a significant problem that to deny it is to purposely overlook it and\nto excuse it. Ward goes on to charge\nthat then-Georgia secretary of state, now governor, Brian Kemp, \u201chas been one\nof the most aggressive politicians involved in purging voters from the rolls.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In making that charge, Ward is merely doing the Democrats\u2019 dirty\nwork. His charge that new anti-fraud\nlaws make it \u201charder to vote, especially for poor and non-white voters,\u201d is false\nand totally unworthy of a credible journalist. \nIf challenged, Ward would be unable to name a single US state that has\nnot made it as simple and as easy as humanly possible to register and to vote. The act of registering and voting is the same\nfor everyone, no matter the age, gender, race, or political affiliation of the\nvoter. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ward tells us that, \u201cKemp and his\naides often spoke of how they were \u2018fighting to protect the integrity of our\nelections.\u2019\u201d That is precisely what they\nwere doing, although Democrats, black and white, use every conceivable device to\ncreate opportunities for vote fraud and to defeat reforms. Democrats even go so far as to oppose every\nstate law requiring voters to show photo IDs before voting, providing some\nproof that they are who they say they are. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a Senate floor speech on\nFebruary 7, 1894, prior to final passage of the Repeal Act of 1894, Senator George Hoar (R-MA) said the following: \u201cWherever\nthere is a crevice in our protection of the freedom of the ballot there you\nwill find the Democratic Party\ntrying to break through. Wherever we\nhave left open an opportunity to get possession of an office contrary to the\ntrue and constitutional will of the majority there you will find that party\npressing; there you will find that party exercising an ingenuity before which\neven the great inventive genius of the American People, exerted in other\ndirections, fails and is insignificant in the comparison.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Hoar concluded by saying, \u201cMr. President, the nation must protect its own.\u00a0 Every citizen whose right is imperiled, if he be but one, when it is a right of national citizenship and a right conferred and enjoyed under the Constitution of the United States, has the right to demand for its protection the entire force of the United States until the Army has spent its last man and the Navy fired its last gun.\u00a0 Most of us have nothing else than the right to vote\u2026. The urn in which the American casts his ballot ought to be, aye, and it shall be, as sacred as a sacramental vessel.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n All that is necessary to expose the hypocrisy behind Democratic opposition\nto photo ID laws is to suggest that, instead, we require voters to dip a pinkie\ninto a vial of indelible ink after voting, as is done in many emerging\ndemocracies of the Third World. This\nwould prevent would-be double voters from voting again and again in multiple venues. It\u2019s hard to imagine what argument Democrats\nwould offer in opposition to that safeguard, but they would be certain to\noppose it and their argument would be a creative one. As for Ward\u2019s concern that Kemp has been \u201cone\nof the most aggressive politicians involved in purging voters from the rolls,\u201d\nare we to infer that he favors keeping disfranchised, fictitious, non-existent,\nnon-citizen, and otherwise ineligible voters on the rolls? For what purpose, other than to facilitate\nfraud?. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Although Dennard had\nlived in Quitman for a number of years, it was not until she became a teacher in\nthe Brooks County school system in 2000 that she became aware of how decisions\nwere made in public education. She noted\nthat, while almost 60 percent of Brooks County residents were white and the\nschool board was composed of all white members, the student bodies in the\npublic schools were mostly African Americans. \nIt was that disparity that caused Dennard to make her first run for a\nseat on the Brooks County school board.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dennard lost her first\nrace for the school board in 2004 and she lost a second attempt in 2008. However, those two losses taught her a great\ndeal about campaigning for public office, especially the importance of\ntargeting residents who had not voted before and the value of using absentee\nballots to enfranchise those who, for one reason or another, found it difficult\nto vote in person. When Dennard made a\nthird attempt in a special election in 2009, she was successful. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Dennard\u2019s three races for the school board produced a number of\nactivists in the black community,\ntwo of whom ran for school board seats, along with Dennard, in the July 2010\nDemocratic primary. However, it was\nduring Dennard\u2019s aggressive 2009 campaign that white Democrats were first\nalerted that a \u201cmovement\u201d was underway in the black community. When an unusually large number of absentee\nballots started showing up in the Quitman post office, often \u201crolled together\nand tied with a rubber band in groups of anywhere from 6 to 8 at a time,\u201d the\npostmaster\u2019s curiosity was aroused and the Georgia secretary of state, Brian\nKemp, was alerted. . <\/p>\n\n\n\n Dennard and her volunteers did a number of things wrong. In some cases, they helped voters mark their\nabsentee ballots or marked the ballots for them. That is illegal. By bundling groups of absentee ballots, they\nwere inviting an investigation by state and local authorities. Furthermore, the act of \u201cbundling\u201d absentee\nballots was a strong indication that someone other than the individual voters,\nor a member of their immediate family, had deposited the ballots at a postal\ncollection point. Under Georgia law,\nvoters must \u201cmail or personally deliver\u201d their ballots to the voting office. For a family member to deliver an absentee\nballot on behalf of another family member is also permissible. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Although the law should be clearer as to who is allowed to deposit\nan absentee ballot in the U.S. mail, the legislative intent is clear. What the legislature was trying to prevent\nwas situations in which a campaign worker from Party D, who witnessed a voter\nmark his\/her ballot for the candidates of Party R, would see to it that that\nballot never made it to its final destination. \nIt is a common practice in ballot \u201charvesting.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dennard was eventually charged with eight counts of \u201cunlawful\npossession of ballots\u201d and three counts of \u201cinterfering with an elector.\u201d Lula Smart, the sister of a 2010 school board\ncandidate, was charged with 25 counts of \u201cunlawful possession of ballots.\u201d The penalties were such that Dennard faced at\nleast thirty years behind bars and Smart could have spent the rest of her life\nbehind bars. Every member of the Quitman\n10+2 faced at least twenty years in prison. \nAnd although Smart was\ntried three times\u2026 the first two trials ending in mistrials\u2026 she was eventually\nacquitted of all charges. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In the end, none of the\nQuitman 10+2 were convicted; no one went to jail. But there is a lesson to be learned. In spite of Ward\u2019s opinion that vote fraud is\nnot a significant problem in our country, the evidence is clear that Democrats\nhave always played fast and loose with the law when an office of public trust\nwas up for grabs. Where Democrats are\nconcerned, politics is just a game, a game that is to be won or lost, and\nlosing is not an option. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Republicans tend to see\nthings quite differently. To\nRepublicans, politics is a noble pursuit. \nSimply stated, it is the process by which we establish government. White Democrats in Brooks County, Georgia,\nmay not understand that, but people in the black community surely do. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Paul\nR. Hollrah is a retired government relations executive and a two-time member of\nthe U.S. Electoral College. He currently\nlives and writes among the hills and lakes of northeast Oklahoma\u2019s Green\nCountry.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" An August 5, 2019, headline on the Yahoo News homepage read, \u201cHow a criminal investigation in Georgia set an ominous tone for African American voters.\u201d The lengthy article was written by Jon Ward, a former political correspondent at HuffPost. Ward … Continue reading