Brambleman

Georgia elections officials plan to make a mockery of recounts. Today’s the last day to tell them “I see what you’re doing”

Photo hat tip @jennycohn1 Update: Surprise–the board didn’t listen to us. The State Election Board voted unanimously Friday to conduct recounts of Georgia’s new paper ballots with scanning machines instead of people: https://t.co/0mDYtxZJGT #gapol — Mark Niesse (@markniesse) February 28, 2020 Action item–Deadline TODAY: Submit written comments on Rule 183-1-15-.03 Optical Scan Recount Procedure by end of day Monday, February 17 to Jasmine Shannon, Secretary of State Elections Division 2 Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, SE 8th Floor West Tower Atlanta GA 30334 or email to jshannon@sos.ga.gov The issue is scheduled for decision on Feb. 28 at the same address, Room 1816. Meeting starts at 9:00 a.m. Hey Georgia: This proposed State Election Board rule is amazingly bad. You should do…

Hey Georgia: This proposed State Election Board rule is amazingly bad. You should do something.

Photo hat tip @jennycohn1 Update: Suprise–they didn’t listen to us. The State Election Board voted unanimously Friday to conduct recounts of Georgia’s new paper ballots with scanning machines instead of people: https://t.co/0mDYtxZJGT #gapol — Mark Niesse (@markniesse) February 28, 2020 Action item–Deadline Monday: Submit written comments on Rule 183-1-15-.03 Optical Scan Recount Procedure by end of day Monday, February 17 to Jasmine Shannon, Secretary of State Elections Division 2 Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, SE 8th Floor West Tower Atlanta GA 30334 or email to jshannon@sos.ga.gov. The issue is scheduled for decision on Feb. 28 at the same address, Room 1816. Meeting starts at 9:00 a.m. By Jonathan Grant @Brambleman You may have noticed elections officials in Georgia have problems running…

DeKalb offers wide array of early voting locations, longer hours for presidential primary, sheriff’s race

Clarkston Mayor Ted Terry spoke out for expanded early voting hours, locations Early voting: March 2-20, 2020 By Jonathan Grant @Brambleman The DeKalb County Board of Elections stepped up its game for the presidential primary and sheriff’s election, unanimously approving on Thursday a staff plan to open 12 early voting sites across the county, many of them with expanded hours. (DeKalb operates two polling locations at its main office, with one set up for voters with disabilities.) Several polling locations will be open on two Saturdsays, March 7 and 17 and one Sunday, March 15. The big change from the past is keeping three polling locations–main office and Dunwoody Library, and South DeKalb Mall–will have extended hours of operation until 8 pm.…

5.5% of voters (the base of the base of the base) elected Philip Singleton to Georgia House. See what he’s done with his “mandate”

Rep. Philip Singleton, media darling Stunt man: Georgia Rep. Philip Singleton may be ineffective, but he’s in your face The latest Georgias Stunt Man prays to MAGA for help on HB 915, his anti-sanctuary city bill. Spoiler alert: Clarkston mayor @tedterry1 recently pointed out, "Georgia has no sanctuary cities. This is a solution in search of a problem." #gapol. More on Rep. Singleton https://t.co/TzeRrCYZ3c pic.twitter.com/bcZr5YGNi8 — Jonathan Grant (@Brambleman) February 12, 2020 By Jonathan Grant @Brambleman For a freshman legislator who won a low-turnout special election, Republican Philip Singleton of Sharpsburg (HD71) gets a lot of attention. Shortly after his contentious runoff victory, he bragged about it in the right-wing Washington Times. Before he took his oath of office, he decided to challenge…

Take that, Scarlett O’Hara: The tale of Tunis Campbell is the true story of Georgia Reconstruction

Tunis G. Campbell, Sr. Georgia Black Reconstruction Leader By Jonathan Grant @Brambleman In 1861, a 49-year-old black abolitionist named Tunis G. Campbell, Sr., walked into a recruiter’s office in New York City and attempted to enlist in the Union Army. Like all African-Americans in the war’s early stages, he was rejected as unfit on the basis of his race. Campbell, a well-educated restaurateur, baker, and published author, didn’t give up. He wrote a letter to President Lincoln outlining a self-improvement plan for freed slaves after the war. As a result, he was sent to Union-occupied Hilton Head, S.C., to work with General Rufus Saxton. In 1865, Campbell—a tall, imposing man who dressed formally and wore spectacles—was appointed military governor of five Georgia…

When my father died, I inherited a huge unfinished manuscript. The rest is history.

By Jonathan Grant @Brambleman The Way It Was in the South: The Black Experience in Georgia was honored as an Editor’s Choice by American Heritage magazine and named Georgia’s nonfiction “Book of the Year” in 1994. I accepted the award on my father’s behalf six years to the day after he died. The last narrative that Dad wrote for The Way It Was covered Hosea Williams’s 1987 marches in Forsyth County, Georgia, the all-white county infamous for its purge of more than 1,000 black residents 75 years previously. My new novel, Brambleman, is a fictional account of that purge–and people’s attempts to come to grips with it. It is very much a story about the burden of Southern history. The Way It Was has been…

Brambleman

Georgia politics, history, and other stuff