A Bit of Hardball

Get the vote suppressors where they work:

The Hancock County Board of Commissioners voted 4-0 Wednesday to ask Rep. Barry Fleming (R-Harlem) to resign as county attorney after pressure from citizens opposed to his work on proposed voting law changes.

Fleming is currently the House Special Committee on Election Integrity Chairman and primary sponsor of HB 531, a 66-page voting omnibus that would make sweeping changes to voting in Georgia, including limiting access to drop boxes and curbing larger counties' ability to offer a full slate of weekend voting.

Hancock has one of the highest proportions of Black voters in the country and has been the center of several voting controversies in recent years, including an episode in 2015 when a fifth of the voters in Sparta — all Black — had their voter registrations challenged.

One of those was Johnny Thornton, a retired DEA agent who lives and works on a catfish farm.

...Thornton said opposition to Fleming's involvement as county attorney has been building for weeks, and he hopes other lawmakers take note of the national conversation about voting rights.

"We might not be taking a lot of money out of his pocket, but it's sure going to embarrass the hell out of him to say your a** has been fired," he said. "That type of leverage will make some of these other state representatives in some of these rural towns say, 'Wait a minute.'"