Thread by @ashtonpittman

When folks say Georgia's voting restrictions law "expands" early voting, they're talking it requiring counties to allow Saturday voting & hold 8 hours of early voting.

Large majority Black counties already do this.

So who benefits? 1/6

A lot of rural white counties in Georgia don't offer Saturday voting or Sunday voting and, in some cases, only do half days of early voting.

This law requires GOP-leaning white to hold early voting on Saturdays & for at least 8 hours (9-5). 2/6

So this "expansion" isn't for areas with majority Black voters or Democratic-leaning voters. It's to force majority white counties to make sure Black voters don't have an advantage.

3/6

Of course, even with more early voting that majority rural white precincts, majority Black precincts still didn't have an overall advantage.

Voters in 90% non-white precincts waited, on average, 51 minutes to vote. In 90% white precincts? 6 minutes. 4/6

So the expansions to early voting in the law are targeted to rural, white GOP leaning voters.

The restrictions in the law, such as bans on handing out food and water, are targeting at Black voters who wait in lines 8x as long on average (some waited 8 hours). 5/6

They've could've uniformly boosted voting access by adjusting resource allocations to deal w/wait time disparities.

But that wasn't the goal.

Making it easier for rural white people to vote helps the party.

So does making it harder for Black folks in Atlanta to vote. 6/6