I’m Raphael Warnock: This is why I want Georgia’s vote in the midterm election to be counted today. But you don’t have to watch.
This is part of an undercover story from our Washington, D.C.-based sister network. The full report is here.
This was meant to be an inside look at the way the Georgia electoral system works. And it’s an inside look at how the 2016 election was affected by a flawed system that many in Congress call “rigged.”
The undercover journalist spent the spring and summer of 2016 shadowing Sen. David Scott, who then led the Senate’s redistricting effort. The goal was to get him to discuss the issue of voter registration, which Scott wanted to pass as a bill through the Senate.
The activist group Protect Our Freedoms put together a photo of Scott in the company of a Latino activist who claimed to help Scott with the Latino community. In all, seven undercover reporters — three of them with the Guardian — spent 12 days shadowing Scott. They filmed his interactions with constituents and political figures on the Senate floor. They even set up cameras in the halls of the Senate.
Most significantly, they got Sen. David Scott to take the stage and explain why he wanted his own bill to gut the National Voter Registration Act — the law that forces all eligible voters to register to vote even if they’ve moved or lost eligibility.
The undercover reporters spent the summer of 2016 trying to get Scott to explain why he wanted to pass legislation that would allow for more discriminatory voting laws.
In the weeks before the vote, Scott said that the bill would be “a good thing.” But in the spring of 2016, Scott told us a different story — that the bill would allow for voter registration laws where people who are no longer in the nation legally — including people in the military, people who are undocumented and illegal immigrants — would be allowed continue to vote.
Scott’s decision to join the bill was
