Atlanta Daily World

The Legislative Election Committee Makes Proposals To The Governor

There have been presented to the governor certain proposals by a legislative committee set up, ostensibly to design laws for the tightening of Georgia's voting regulations.

The committee sets forth, in addition to certain questions to be answered by the individual, some offenses which would prevent a person from registering.

One member of the committee made no bones of his contention that the report was aimed "at illiterate Negro bloc voting."

By and large it is obvious that this whole report is aimed at Negro voters. That apparently is conclusive. Negro voters might as well sense this. As first stated, it is one of those subterfuges meant for the prohibiting of Negroes from voting.

In the first place this report comes too close on the heels of the Civil Rights bill which was intended to protect the voters under question.

As late as 1948 a revision of Georgia laws regulating voting was made. The old rules were brought up to date, and while on that point it is wholly unnecessary and out of place for another report to be made which smacks of what previously has been ascribed as something to cut down Negro voting.

While some say this was not aimed at the Negro voters, such a measure saw service in the Randolph county case in which a federal judge found cause to impose damages and order the names of Negro registrants restored to the register.

Let those who are not registered and are eligible, get ready and register before these new and unnecessary rules are made into law. Get ahead of the scheme and get all of the eligibles you know to do likewise.

Strange as it may seem, those engaged in the pastime of devising schemes and directing strategy to cut down Negro voting, apparently do not realize from the lessons of the past that when Negro voting is cut down, there is a letup in voting in general. In the lean days of Negro voting, there hardly appeared at the polls in Georgia enough voters to make it look like an election. The elections were decided around petty squabbles and family quarrels in the primary. The elections drew the criticism that less people voted in the whole state than in many of the upstate New York counties.

The Civil Rights bill was designed to protect voters; such attempts made at the life-vein of our Democracy will be resisted to the last ditch. Those voters who have gone all out to secure registrants in order that a wider scope of representation might obtain, are not thinking of taking such a slap lying down.

We repeat again; let's answer the committee by showing more determination to get every eligible voter on the election rolls.