The county attorney for a largely Black community in Georgia was pushing to limit voting access in the state. Residents there protested — and now he’s out
A state lawmaker leading an effort to restrict voting rights in Georgia has been asked to resign from his role as attorney for a majority-Black county where residents as recently as 2015 accused other local officials of “making Black votes disappear.”
State Rep. Barry Fleming, R-Harlem, is cosponsoring a bill that’s among more than 250 proposals, pending across 43 states, to restrict voting access. Until last week, Fleming also served as county attorney in Hancock County, where 7 of 10 residents is Black and where residents will cast ballots through the end of the year under the watch of a court-appointed examiner after the county election board was accused in a federal lawsuit of unfairly removing voters — most of them Black — from the rolls.
While Fleming was not lead counsel for the county defendants in the federal lawsuit, his recent efforts to limit voting access in the state angered some Hancock County residents, who are still reeling from the battle over voting rolls.
“So many people in the county didn’t know he was the attorney. Now, some Blacks in the community who … have an understanding of things are infuriated,” said Johnny Thornton, who helped launch the federal lawsuit after the Board of Elections and Registration scrubbed him from the voting rolls in 2015.
“We’re one of the poorest counties in the country, and we’re paying this attorney and he’s in Atlanta creating laws to further restrict our voting rights,” the retired Drug Enforcement Administration agent said.
The issue in the sprawling central Georgia county of 8,500 people came as former gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams and other voting rights activists decried GOP-led efforts to limit access to the polls nationwide, saying the bills amount to attacks on democracy and Black voters.
President Joe Biden last week wielded his executive power to launch a counteroffensive, expanding voting access, and a sweeping bill making its way through Congress was introduced in response to state-level efforts to restrict voting access.
Fleming is chairman of the state Legislature’s Special Committee on Election Integrity. Despite Georgia’s Republican secretary of state repeatedly saying there’s no evidence of widespread fraud in November’s election, Fleming has sought to tighten voting access and has likened absentee voting to “the shady part of town down near the docks.”
His House Bill 531 includes several restrictions on voting access, limiting ballot drop boxes, absentee voting and Sunday early voting — the latter a popular get-out-the-vote method among Black churches, which provide transportation to take “souls to the polls.”
Ninety-seven House Republicans approved the bill, while 72 Democrats voted against it. The bill remained pending in the state Senate Ethics Committee on Friday.
Protesters demand action, and get it
Last week, 40 or so protesters, many wearing “Black Voters Matter” T-shirts, took to the steps of the Hancock County Courthouse in Sparta. Their placards left no mystery as to their expectations of the Board of Commissioners at its regular meeting:
“Fleming doesn’t care about Hancock”
“A vote for him is a vote against us”
“Fire Fleming! Protect our vote!”
“Barry needs to be suppressed”
The commissioners opted to ask Fleming to step down, though their reasoning is not clear: The minutes indicate his future with the county was decided in an hourlong executive session closed to the public.
“I don’t think it needs discussion,” Commissioner Ted Reid, who was in the session, told CNN. “Mr. Fleming was asked to resign by unanimous consent.”
Asked why, Reid said the commission had released a statement, but he was referring to the commission meeting’s minutes, which are unofficial and provide no rationale.
They say only, “Unanimous consent by Commissioners to ask Mr. Fleming for resignation,” and add that “while the search for county attorney services is in process,” any legal matters will be addressed by a partner from Fleming’s law firm outside Augusta.
CNN reached out to all of the commissioners named in the minutes. BOC Chairwoman Sistie Hudson, BOC clerk Borderick Foster and Commissioners Gloria Cooper, Steve Hill and Randolph Clayton did not return CNN’s emails or phone calls seeking comment.
Reid did not know if Fleming had acquiesced to the BOC’s request, he said Monday, but local media reports indicate Fleming stepped down last week. Fleming, who also serves as county attorney in Burke, Glascock and Putnam counties and has represented several small Georgia cities, did not return CNN’s requests for comment.
“Hancock County is a great place,” the longtime lawmaker told CNN affiliate WXIA. “There’s a great Board of Commissioners there. I enjoyed working with them for, I think, nine years, and I only wish them the best.”
Speaking to the lawmaker after a closed-door session on election bills, WXIA reported Fleming said he felt no animus toward the county.
“None whatsoever. They’re good people, and if I could ever do anything in the future to help them, I’d be happy to do it,” he said.
People protesting his proposed voting legislation “misunderstand” many of its components, he said, according to the station, which provided no elaboration.
Abrams says legislation targets Black voters
Fleming’s resignation came days before Abrams, the 2018 gubernatorial candidate cum voting activist, slammed state voting bills across the country, alleging their aim is to suppress Black votes after a November election that saw record turnout at state and national levels. She likened the Georgia efforts to “a redux of Jim Crow, in a suit and tie.”
“The only connection that we can find is that more people of color voted, and it changed the outcome of elections in a direction that Republicans do not like,” Abrams told CNN.
Despite assurances from Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, that there was no evidence of widespread fraud in the recent elections — which saw Biden and two Democratic senators win Georgia — former President Donald Trump and other Republicans have repeatedly made false claims that the 2020 election was rigged.
Raffensperger said in January that Trump was operating on “bad data,” and The Washington Post reported last month the district attorney in Fulton County, which includes parts of Atlanta, is investigating a call between Trump loyalist Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, and Raffensperger to determine if Trump’s team violated any laws in trying to overturn his election loss. Raffensperger’s office, too, is investigating the ex-President. Graham has refuted Raffensperger’s account of the call.
In an op-ed for The Augusta Chronicle days after the November election, Fleming referred to “the always-suspect absentee balloting process” in Georgia and other states, and told readers to expect the Republican-led General Assembly to address it this year.
“If elections were like coastal cities,” Fleming wrote, “absentee balloting would be the shady part of town down near the docks you do not want to wander into.”
He closed urging readers to elect Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue to the US Senate. The Republicans lost their seats in a January runoff, which handed control of the Senate to Democrats. The reliably Democratic Hancock County ticked the boxes for Biden and Sens. Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock by 71.7%, 72.3% and 72.4%, respectively.
Voters still feel the sting of being burned
The county voted in the 2020 general and runoff elections under the supervision of an examiner appointed by the US District Court for the Middle District of Georgia. Thornton and other voters filed a lawsuit in 2015 after the county Board of Elections and Registration tried to remove voters from the rolls and sent deputies to their homes, summonsing them to prove their eligibility.
“The BOER frequently accepted hearsay, speculation, and unsubstantiated rumors provided by unnamed witnesses and anonymous individuals as sufficient evidence to remove registered Black voters,” the lawsuit said.
Almost all of the voters targeted in the purge were African American. When resident Larry Webb, who is Black, went to the BOER to challenge White voters he knew had died or moved out of the county, emails revealed in the lawsuit showed voting officials did not take Webb’s challenges seriously. They also declined to send deputies to the White voters’ homes unless Webb paid $50 a pop, where the BOER had sent deputies to Black voters’ homes as a courtesy, Webb told CNN.
Responding to the lawsuit, the election board “strenuously” denied violating any laws, including targeting Black voters.
The federal court reinstated many of the purged voters to the rolls and administered a consent decree, appointing an examiner “who will review the BOER’s actions regarding list maintenance and voter challenges based on residency” and make recommendations on how to comply with state law, a court order said.
Examiner Gary Spencer, an Atlanta attorney, told CNN in December the county has been “sort of noneventful” since his appointment. For many residents, though, it’s tough to forget recent history.
“What they did was beyond voter suppression. If something is wrong with your voter registration, they should call you and tell you what’s wrong. What they were doing is taking you off the rolls, and you wouldn’t find out until the election,” Webb told CNN. “They were making Black votes disappear.”
