A Georgia county set off a tense debate by planning to reduce polling sites

https://www.npr.org/2022/01/26/ [login to see] /a-georgia-county-set-off-a-voting-rights-debate-by-planning-to-reduce-polling-si
As a half-dozen voting rights advocates filed into the Lincoln County Board of Elections to deliver a petition that temporarily halted plans to shutter polling places, the tension between them and elections director Lilvender Bolton was nearly palpable.

After spending the afternoon anxiously watching the front door for the petitions she knew were coming, going over the events that had brought national scrutiny to the question of voter access in her rural east Georgia county, Bolton gave a defiant stare as she took the thick stack of papers into her tiny office, ending the awkward handoff.

Back outside, gazing at a bank of cameras and reporters, Denise Freeman, a Lincoln County resident rallying opposition to the plan, let out a deep sigh.

"It is unconscionable that we would even have anyone to think about closing precincts in 2022," said Freeman, a Black pastor and former school board member. "It takes us back to an era that we thought that we would never have to go back to."

Hours before the petitions arrived at the door, Bolton had let out her own sigh as she considered how she had been portrayed in recent weeks.