ATLANTA ‒ Nearly a dozen young men spent hours at Georgia STAND-UP one recent morning stuffing masks, mints and hand sanitizers in care packages for voters who may wait in long lines starting in October.
Across town, workers at The Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda set up voter registration tables at local colleges and senior citizen buildings.
And at Clark Atlanta University, organizers with a group called RISE helped register students and collect pledge cards at the historically black college.
To combat what they call voter suppression efforts in Georgia, grassroots organizations aim to register thousands of voters of color urging them to cast ballots early, show up in person and turn out in record numbers so there’s little doubt who the winner is on Election Day.
With Georgia in play in the battle for the presidency, they are determined to help voters understand and navigate what they call the state’s restrictive election changes .
“The way you combat the voter suppression techniques or the barriers that they’re putting in place is having a large turnout,’’ said Helen Butler, executive director of the nonpartisan Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda. “We’re not telling people who to vote for, but we’re telling them to vote, to exercise their power…To do that you’ve got to have a large turnout so there isn’t any question by the election deniers.’’