Wow, what a shock. Black Georgians trekked to the polls on Georgia primary day, to exercise their right to vote in a state that could prove crucial in the November presidential election…only to discover (hold your breath) that, especially in minority-heavy Atlanta, there were waits as long as three hours, there were voting machines that didn’t work, and there weren’t enough ballots.

Atlanta’s newspaper headlined “A Complete Meltdown.” The director of New Georgia Project, which mobilizes voters of color, said the situation was “a hot, flaming, f—–g mess.” And the co-founder of a group called Black Voters Matter said: “We have got to stop making voting a traumatic damn experience for black voters. Everything has to be a traumatic experience.” Meanwhile, in the white suburbs of Atlanta, people voted yesterday without a hitch.

Funny how that stuff keeps happening in Georgia. In the 2018 gubernatorial race, Stacey Abrams lost a squeaker amidst reports of exceptionally long lines in black voting precincts, voting locales being closed or relocated with little advance notice, and voters being spurned even when they showed proper ID. And surely it was just a coincidence that Republican Brian Kemp, the narrow victor in that gubernatorial race, happened to be the Secretary of State in charge of running the election – and who, at the time, had stalled the registrations of 50,000 predominantly black voters.

Yep, that’s the contemporary GOP – the white racists’ party once known as the party of Lincoln.

Republicans are notably terrified about Georgia, which has been inching ever closer to becoming a swing state – and may conceivably be in play for Joe Biden, amidst reports that state Democrats since 2018 have put 700,000 new registrants on the voting rolls. That could be pivotal in November – assuming, of course, that those folks actually get the chance to vote.

By the way, the current Georgia Secretary of State, a Kemp henchman, claims to be startled by all the snags in minority precincts and is vowing to “investigate.” As Claude Raines declared in Casablanca, he’s shocked – SHOCKED – to learn that gambling is going on at Rick’s.

But let’s pull back the camera and look at the big picture. That way we can bring Republican racism into sharper focus.

On the issue of voting, Georgia was flagged decades ago, by the Justice Department, as one of the states with the most persistent racial discrimination. Thanks to the historic Voting Rights Act – enacted in 1965 by a bipartisan Congress (back when moderate Republicans were plentiful) – Georgia was subjected to ongoing Justice Department scrutiny. Justice was empowered by the VRA to stop any and all Georgia vote suppression schemes.

Unfortunately for black Georgians, the Republican-led U.S. Supreme Court signaled its distaste for the VRA starting in 2009. That’s when Chief Justice John Roberts said that federal enforcement in misbehaving southern states “represents an intrusion into areas of state and local responsibility.” Besides, he insisted, states like Georgia aren’t even misbehaving anymore. In his words (I swear this quote is real), “Things have changed in the South.”

But the high court didn’t officially gut the VRA until it ruled to do so in 2013. The margin, of course, was 5-4. In the immortal words of Antonin Scalia, the voting rights law was “a perpetuation of racial entitlement” – which was news to me, because I’d never realized that equal access to the ballot was a racial entitlement. The Republican appointees erased the Justice Department’s enforcement powers, insisting that such oversight was no longer needed. John Roberts declared (in one of the most hilarious lines of 2013) that racial disenfranchisement “is no longer the problem it once was.”

Clearly, the guy needed to get out more.

Black votes aren’t suppressed with vicious dogs and billy clubs anymore. Today’s methods, as evidenced again in Georgia yesterday, are far more subtle. Overt violence is out; computer keystrokes and mendacious lawyering are in. The result is the same.

There’s one more piece of this puzzle: In 1965, the Voting Rights Act was enacted with a provision that required periodic reauthorization. And it was duly reauthorized by Congress four times – in 1970, 1975, 1982, and 2006. Each time, renewal was overwhelmingly bipartisan. When it was renewed in 2006 (by a Republican House, 390-33; by a Republican Senate, including a thumbs-up by Mitch McConnell), lawmakers explained why Justice Department oversight remained essential:

“40 years has not been a sufficient amount of time to eliminate the vestiges of discrimination following nearly 100 years of disregard for the dictates of the 15th (right to vote) Amendment, and to ensure that the right of all citizens to vote is protected as guaranteed by the Constitution.”

The high court’s 2013 ruling erased all that. But John Roberts gave Congress a wee bit of wiggle room. He said in his ruling that Congress was free to revise and update the law, to maybe make it possible for Justice to stop voter suppression without picking so much on southern states. Weak tea, yes. But care to guess which powerful senator has consistently blocked all efforts to pass a new voting rights law? His faux-reasoning echoes Roberts: “America is very different today than what it was in the 1960s.”

As we know, Donald Trump didn’t create Republican racism. But he has fatally weaponized it, and practicing it at the ballot box is the party’s best hope to survive November. We’ll soon see whether Democrats, and the Biden campaign, are up to the challenge.