LeBron James weighed in on the disorganization plaguing Georgia's primary elections on Tuesday, expressing frustration at people not being able to vote in the wake of protests and civil unrest over police brutality in the US.
James, one of the most prominent athletes, has used his platform in recent days to raise awareness about Floyd's death, the issue of police violence, and Americans peacefully protesting police brutality.
In-person voting in Georgia, held during an unprecedented pandemic with a shortage of poll workers, quickly descended into chaos in many counties and Atlanta because of poll workers' trouble working Georgia's new voting machines and a lack of backup paper ballots.
Voters in a number of precincts, including many with large communities of color, reported waiting in line for hours to vote as workers struggled to fix machines and acquire provisional ballots. Some people left without voting.
"Everyone talking about 'how do we fix this?' They say 'go out and vote?' What about asking if how we vote is also structurally racist?" James tweeted with a link to a Politico story documenting the difficulties many voters, especially in predominately Black neighborhoods, faced on Tuesday.
—LeBron James (@KingJames) June 9, 2020
In the tweet James shared, activist LaTosha Brown, who cofounded the Black Voters Matter Fund, told Politico that while she waited three hours to vote in Atlanta, she saw voters in a nearby majority-white precinct walk in with little-to-no wait.
"We have got to stop making voting a traumatic damn experience for Black voters. Everything has to be a traumatic experience," she told Politico.
Numerous academic studies have shown that Black voters and voters of color face disproportionate barriers to voting and are more likely to have their voter registrations purged, live in neighborhoods with lower-quality in-person voting options and longer lines to vote, and have their mail-in ballots rejected.
