The Problem With Boycotting Georgia

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Publish Date:
April 7, 2021
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Slate
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Summary

Nathaniel Persily, a professor of law at Stanford Law School, where he co-directs the Stanford-MIT Healthy Elections Project, explains in an email why Georgia is commanding attention for what is actually a nationwide problem:

Georgia has become a metaphor for the voting rights struggle, as much as it is one of the chief battlegrounds. It is far from the worst when it comes to voting accessibility. But attention has naturally drawn to it given the upset by Dems there in both the presidential and Senate races, the recent history of the president’s attempted manipulation of the vote totals, the fact that the state is controlled by Republicans (most of whom believe the 2020 election was stolen), and both the history and contemporary relevance of the fight by black voters for full voting access and equal citizenship. It represents a perfect storm of all of the forces and symbols of the contemporary voting rights struggle, and the backlash that the 2020 election and big lie have produced. It should not eclipse the larger movement afoot to retrench on voting rights, but instead Georgia should serve as a flashpoint for making the arguments that can be generalized wherever governments are making voting more difficult in response to misperceptions that the 2020 election was stolen.

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