The Georgia Politics Podcast

Welcome to The Georgia Politics Podcast! Megan is joined by Poy Winichakul, a Senior Staff Attorney for the Southern Poverty Law Center, to discuss Alabama’s failed attempt to chip away at the Voting Rights Act and disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of black voters in the state. The Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965 was a direct response to decades of racism and Jim Crow in the deep south that created an unequal playing field for non-white voters. Section 2 of the VRA is a provision that prohibits state governments from imposing any rules or regulations around voting that would "result in the denial or abridgement of the right of any citizen to vote on account of race or color". This provision has been used for decades to prevent legislatures from packing and cracking minorities into unfair congressional districts through the redistricting process. Megan and Poy discuss the Allen v. Milligan case that made it all the way to the Supreme Court and, somewhat surprisingly, reinforced the necessity and importance