Georgia police are being sent to black residents’ homes to challenge their voting rights

Luther Vandross was outed as gay after his death.

A Georgia town is dispatching police to black residents’ homes to challenge their rights to vote.

According to the New York Timesthe Hancock County Board of Elections and Registration has been “systematically questioning the registrations of more than 180” black residents in Sparta, Georgia “by dispatching deputies with summonses commanding them to appear in person to prove their residence or lose their voting rights.”

According to a new lawsuit, the deputies were sent out in order to help white candidates win races, a claim that county attorney Barry Fleming, who claims that the policies are meant to combat corruption, vehemently denies.

“The allegations that people were denied the right to vote are the opposite of the truth,” said Fleming. “This is probably more about politics and power than race.”

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However, even if not everyone who was targeted was taken off the voter rolls, the simple fact that police have become involved could deter people from voting.

“A lot of those people that was challenged probably didn’t vote, even though they weren’t proven to be wrong,” Marion Warren, a Sparta elections official, told the Times. “People just do not understand why a sheriff is coming to their house to bring them a subpoena, especially if they haven’t committed any crime.”

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