[mooby]

Thought this story from a Reddit user about how hard it is registering to vote in GA was a good look at the process designed to disenfranchise potential voters.

https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/co...eb2x&context=3

Originally Posted by u/hauntedbalaclava

I’m just going to give you a run down of my own experience trying to register to vote in Atlanta, Ga this year.

You have to have a state issued ID which I didn’t yet have as a new resident of the state. So I hopped online and signed up for an appointment at the DMV. Appointments were booked solid for almost two months. On the website it says they are taking people by appointment only. Okay. So I sign up for a date two months later.

On the day of my appointment I have every. Single. Duck. In. A. Row. I have my original birth certificate, my social security card, two pieces of mail, the lease to my new apartment, a phone bill. I drove to Florida this summer to pick up my birth certificate from my parents’ safe. I am ready. I show up to the dmv (dds in Ga) about forty minutes early. There is only one dds office per county for some reason, and metro Atlanta (inside the perimeter) covers primarily two counties. That’s two offices for the entire population inside the Atlanta perimeter.

When I get to where the GPS sends me I find myself at a dead mall. The entire mall is closed. There’s an abandoned JCPenney’s, movie theater, the works. This place doesn’t look like the DMV. I drive around for twenty minutes trying to find an entrance. Is it inside the dead mall? Why is there no signage? I finally find a security guard who looks tired of being asked where the DMV is. He directs me to a single door down a long outdoor sort of “hallway.”

The DMV is inside and around the corner and the line for appointments is snaking around the inside of the mall. Your appointment is just a reservation for a time, the order you arrive and the time of your appointment will determine where in the line you get to stand. There are members of the DMV staff trying to patiently soothe the angry patrons who haven’t even made it in the door of the office yet.

There are easily 13 desks for service at this DMV, 3-4 of them are manned with a fifth staff member having to leave their post and manage the line. I finally get called to the desk. The process once at the desk takes ten minutes. I’m handed a temporary ID and sent on my way. All told I just waited two months for an appointment and spent about five hours physically in the DMV.

I go home and immediately try to register to vote online. At this point it is three days before the voter registration deadline so I should be totally in the clear, right? Wrong. When I finish my online registration I’m notified that my “application for registration” has been received and that it will take four weeks for my registration to be processed. I will not be registered to vote in time.

I call the Fulton county voter services number and try to get a person on the phone. I wait on hold for about an hour. When I get someone on the phone she tells me there is nothing she can do and hangs up. I call back. Wait again. I get someone nicer who tells me that they’re just a call center. They aren’t really employed by the Fulton county voter registration office. The most they can do is search voter records to see if I’m registered, which is the same thing I can do from my home computer.

So I get pissed. I weigh my options, and I realize I’m still technically on my lease in Florida. I request an absentee ballot from my last city of residence and I manage to cast my vote in the election.

This stuff is built to fail by design. Register NOW to vote in the GA runoffs. The good news is, I’m registered in GA now and will be proudly casting my vote to take back the senate in January. FUCK the racist GOP.