White House ‘deeply concerned’ with Black Georgia lawmaker’s arrest for knocking on governor’s door

The White House is “deeply concerned” with the arrest of a Georgia lawmaker who was forcibly removed from the state’s Capitol as Governor Brian Kemp signed sweeping ballot restrictions into law.

“I think anyone who saw that video would have been deeply concerned by the actions that were taken by law enforcement to arrest her,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters on Friday. “The largest concern here … is the law that was put into place.”

After her release from jail on Thursday night, Georgia Rep Park Cannon has vowed to combat voter suppression, as an outpouring of support and outrage across the US has followed her arrest.

“I will not stand by while our voting rights are threatened across this state, the state I swore an oath to represent with integrity, honesty, and respect for the millions of people who live and work in this community,” the Democratic representative said in a statement on Friday hours after her release from a Fulton County jail.

Widely shared video of her arrest shows Ms Cannon, who is Black, handcuffed with her arms behind her back after she was removed as Governor Kemp announced his signature on the Republican-backed legislation, which transfers election oversight from election officials and into the hands of Republican lawmakers, reduces the number of places where people can vote and makes it a criminal offence to provide food and water to people waiting in voting lines, among other provisions that disproportionately target Black voters.

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“Voting is a constitutional right guaranteed to every person over the age of 18 born not only in Georgia but in every corner of the United States,” Ms Cannon said. “To limit that right is to go against our Constitution and the ideals of the Founding Fathers that Conservative Georgians hold so dear.”

She added: “So it confuses and concerns me that those same conservative lawmakers that are now fighting so hard to limit and suppress the voting rights of all Georgians, but specifically Black and brown voters, a population of voters who have historically been disenfranchised in this state.”

Georgia is not alone – dozens of GOP-backed bills in at least 43 states have proposed tightening restrictions on ballot access, from strict voter ID laws to eliminating early voting periods and absentee voting, fuelled by the false narratives of widespread voter fraud and “irregularities” in 2020 elections promoted by former president Donald Trump.

US Senator Raphael Warnock – one of two Democratic senators from Georgia elected in January – said her arrest marked a “very sad day for the state of Georgia”.

“What we have witnessed today is a desperate attempt to lock out and squeeze the people out of their own democracy,” Mr Warnock told reporters outside a Fulton County jail on Thursday night.

Ms Cannon faces one charge of obstructing law enforcement officers by use of threats or violence and a second charge of disrupting a general assembly session or other meeting of members. In video footage, she can be seen repeatedly asking police why she is being arrested and telling them she is a state lawmaker.

Georgia’s state constitution provides that lawmakers “shall be free from arrest during sessions of the General Assembly” except for treason, felony or breach of the peace.

“This effort to silence the voices of Georgians who stood up in a historic election in November and January will not stand,” Mr Warnock said. “The goal of voter suppression is to demoralise the electorate to people don’t even bother to try. ... They’re trying to fix something that’s not even broken. We should be making it easier for people to vote, not harder. The people aren’t asking for this. This is democracy in reverse. Rather than people choosing their politicians, politicians are trying to cherry pick their voters.”

Mr Kemp announced on Thursday that “there’s no doubt there were many alarming issues with how the election was handled, and those problems led to a crisis of confidence in the ballot box here in Georgia,” despite several audits and hand counts of Georgia’s election results finding no evidence of widespread fraud or other issues that impacted the outcomes or conditions of elections.

State election officials across the US, including in Georgia, as well as the Justice Department and FBI have all reported no evidence of significant election fraud, and most bills offered up by Republicans – such as cutting down on early voting hours and limiting locations to turn in ballots – do not appear to do anything to combat it.

President Joe Biden, who was the first Democratic presidential candidate to carry the state since 1992, condemned Republican-led restrictions on voting rights as “un-American” and “sick”.

The House of Representatives has passed a massive elections bill, the For The People Act, that if signed into law would be the largest piece of voting rights legislation since the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

That bill aims to standardise voting access at ballots in every state and territory, eliminate long-standing barriers to voting and allow candidates with smaller platforms to wield more political power, among other provisions. It would effectively nullify the state-level bills currently pending in legislatures.

But it faces a murky path in the US Senate, despite aggressive support from Democratic lawmakers and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who has repeatedly said that “failure is not an option” when it comes to voting rights.

Under current Senate rules, the bill needs at least 10 GOP senators to join Democrats to clear the chamber’s 60-vote threshold for legislation.