Someone put up signs in Black neighborhoods of Atlanta telling voters that Election Day was Thursday, Nov. 5. It was Tuesday, Nov. 3. A voter who trusted the sign would have missed the election.
Atlanta pastors raised the alarm at a Monday meeting of Concerned Black Clergy of Metropolitan Atlanta, as WSB-TV and Atlanta Black Star reported. Associate Pastor Gregory Saunders of Berean Seventh-day Adventist Church in northwest Atlanta was the first to find one, near the church. He took it for a real change of date, then checked and found it was not. He removed the sign and told his congregation.
“Someone who is intentional,” Saunders said. “Who doesn’t want to see the process work honestly.”
The Rev. Shanan Jones, the group’s president, said the signs were not everywhere, but that he had seen them only in Black neighborhoods. “It’s trickery,” he said. He tied it to “the same folks that have been trying to disenfranchise and marginalize people.”
What is established is narrow. Signs with the wrong date appeared in more than one predominantly Black neighborhood, and at least one was taken down. What is not established is who made them or why. The reports do not include a response from Fulton County elections officials or the Georgia secretary of state, and no one has claimed the signs. A printing error is possible. The pastors do not think it is one. A wrong date placed where Black voters live, and not where the clergy have seen it elsewhere, matches a long-running voter suppression tactic: false election information aimed at Black neighborhoods.
Black voters in Georgia are already asked to double-check everything: their polling place, their ID, their hours. This sign asked them to check the calendar.
The clergy are spreading the correction through their congregations. Election Day was Tuesday.
Fulton County and the secretary of state’s office should say publicly whether they have received reports of the signs, where they were found, and whether they have been referred for investigation. Knowingly spreading a false election date to deceive voters is the kind of conduct election officials and prosecutors can act on. Whoever put these signs up should be found.
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