By Aliyu DANLADI
A county Elections Board in Georgia on Friday blocked an effort to close most polling places in a largely black county ahead of the November election a county spokesman said.
This is an election, where a Democrat is vying to become the first U.S. African-American female governor.
The Randolph County board of elections voted 2-0 to make no changes to voting precincts, a spokesman said in a phone interview.
Both Stacey Abrams, the Democratic nominee who is seeking to become the nation’s first black female governor, and Republican candidate Brian Kemp, who is white and serves as Georgia’s secretary of state, had urged county officials to drop the plan.
The proposal had been submitted by an elections consultant who had donated money to Kemp’s campaign, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
It said county officials who had hired the consultant in April to work on election management fired him on Wednesday.
“We are pleased African-Americans voters in Randolph County will be able to access polling stations in November.
“Too often they are faced with voter suppression tactics like this which are clearly motivated by racial animus,” Kristen Clarke, president of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said in a phone interview.
The proposal would have closed seven of the rural county’s nine polling sides because they were not wheelchair accessible, which board members said was a violation of federal disabilities law.
Some 60 per cent of the rural county’s 7,100 residents are black. “In the United States, the right to vote is sacred.
“The interest and concern shown has been overwhelming, and it is an encouraging reminder that protecting the right to vote remains a fundamental American principle,” the Randolph County Board of Elections said in a statement, according to the newspaper
Officials at the county board did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Randolph County is 125 miles (200km) south of Atlanta.
