Pascrell Sounds Alarm on Georgia Election Chaos

PATERSON, NJ – U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell, Jr. (D-NJ-09) today remarked on the primary elections in Georgia yesterday punctuated by hours-long-lines to vote in urban and minority communities.

“The voting chaos the world witnessed in Georgia is an affront to democracy,” said Rep. Pascrell, a longtime supporter of passing a reinvigorated Voting Rights Act. “When you see these long lines over and over it’s a pattern and a deliberate attempt to steal the cherished voting rights of our communities of color. Americans being forced to wait for hours to vote – and during a deadly global pandemic – is a threat to democracy in every town and community in the entire nation.

“These deliberate subversions of voting are nothing short of blaring alarm bells and should be viewed as a dry-run for larger-scale interference in November. General elections are 149 days away. The House has acted decisively by enacting H.R. 4 to reinvigorate the Voting Rights Act and the HEROES Act which provides strong funding to help states expand their vote-by-mail capacity. Both bills are being ignored by the McConnell Senate. Protecting democracy must be one of Congress’s top priorities this year and beyond. We don’t have much time.”