Northeastern emeritus Professor Robert Starks and the late Cook County Clerk Karen A. Yarbrough were among hundreds to attend the screening of Greg Palast’s new film, “Vigilante: Vote Suppression Hitman,” which exposed Georgia Gov. Brian’s Kemp’s family of illegal slavery at a time when Georgia was a free state. Palast revealed that Kemp’s great, great-grandfather, James Habersham, was the one who first brought Africans to Georgia. “That is how Kemp’s family became wealthy,” Palast said. “We are going to expose his past and present engagement in black voter suppression.” P The screening was held on October 12, 2022, at the Rainbow PUSH Coalition. Photo by Chinta Strausberg
Investigative reporter Greg Palast claims that Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris would have defeated Donald Trump by 1.2 million votes in 2024, if not for widespread voter suppression tactics. According to Palast, the actions of Republican officials, including the purging of Black voters from the rolls and the rejection of ballots, ultimately cost Harris the election.
Palast, a long-time investigative journalist who has worked with the BBC, Rolling Stone, and The Guardian, discussed his findings during interviews with the Chicago Crusader on February 14 and 16 on WVON radio. He concluded that, if all legal votes had been counted, Harris would have won the popular vote by 3.5 million votes in addition to claiming key battleground states.
“If not for the mass purge of voters of color, the disqualification of provisional and mail-in ballots, and the new ‘vigilante’ challenges in swing states, Kamala Harris would have won,” Palast said. He cited data from the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission, which revealed that over 4.7 million voters were wrongly purged from voter rolls.
Palast pointed specifically to voter purges in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Georgia—states that ultimately went for Trump. He argued that these tactics were reminiscent of historical Jim Crow-era voter suppression, including the revival of a 1946 KKK-inspired plan to challenge voters of color.
According to Palast, the figures are staggering: 2.1 million mail-in ballots were disqualified due to minor errors such as insufficient postage, while more than 1.2 million provisional ballots were rejected. An additional 3.2 million new voter registrations were either rejected or not processed in time.
“I went through the purge list for Black Lives Matter and the ACLU, and we found that people of color were disproportionately purged from the rolls in Milwaukee and Georgia,” Palast explained. He noted that experts from Amazon and the U.S. Postal Service helped identify 198,000 wrongly purged voters. “It’s not just numbers. I called 800 of them, and the vast majority were Black voters.”
Palast’s investigation also uncovered cases of individual voters being unfairly blocked from voting. In one example, Palast recalled meeting 92-year-old Christian Jordan in Atlanta. Jordan, a cousin of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., had voted in Georgia for 50 years, but she was denied her right to vote in 2024. “Her granddaughter was in tears,” Palast said. “This is how Trump won Georgia—through selective purges of Black and minority voters, then rejecting their ballots if they did manage to get back on the rolls.”
Palast also described the use of new voter challenges, such as the “True the Vote” group, which challenged over 300,000 voters across key swing states. He pointed to Georgia and Pennsylvania, where large numbers of Black voters were targeted by self-appointed voter fraud vigilantes. In Georgia, these challenges disproportionately affected military voters. “One Georgia military officer, stationed in California, was told he couldn’t vote due to a challenge,” Palast said. “He had to fly back 2,700 miles to cast his ballot.”
The effects of these challenges, according to Palast, were widespread. The NAACP estimated that more than 200,000 challenges were filed in Georgia alone. Palast argued that these tactics amounted to a “resurrection” of the racist voter suppression schemes of the past, with the goal of reducing voter participation in communities of color.
“In Washington state, an audit found that Black voters’ ballots were 400% more likely to be rejected than white voters’ ballots,” Palast explained. “It’s not random. These tactics are targeted, and they disproportionately affect people of color.”
Palast’s findings are particularly concerning in the context of new restrictive voting laws passed by Republican-controlled states. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, at least 30 states enacted 78 laws restricting voting access following the 2020 election. These laws ranged from limiting access to drop boxes in Black-majority areas to empowering non-governmental groups to challenge voters at the polls.
“Since the 2020 election, we’ve seen an avalanche of new laws designed to block people of color from voting,” Palast said. “These laws have been passed with the clear intention of suppressing Democratic-leaning voters, and their effect on election outcomes is undeniable.”
Despite his findings, Palast expressed frustration that mainstream media outlets have largely ignored the impact of voter suppression on the 2024 election. He argued that while some outlets have covered isolated instances of voter suppression, they have failed to acknowledge that these tactics changed the outcome of the election.
“If these voter suppression laws had no effect on election outcomes, why did Republican legislators fight so hard to pass them?” Palast said. “It’s clear that these laws were passed to ensure Trump’s victory.”
Palast compared the 2024 election to the 2000 Bush v. Gore contest, in which he claimed voter suppression in Florida helped George W. Bush secure the presidency. “In too many cases, this election was determined by good old-fashioned vote suppression,” he said, using the term “Jim Crow” to describe the deliberate disenfranchisement of Black voters. “We don’t count all the votes, and we don’t let every citizen vote. That’s the ugly little secret of American democracy.”
In the aftermath of the 2024 election, Palast’s team continues to push for accountability and transparency in how votes are counted and protected. He emphasized that the struggle for voting rights is ongoing and will require continued efforts to combat discriminatory laws and practices.
“This isn’t just about numbers,” Palast said. “It’s about the fundamental right of every American to have their vote counted. Until we fix these systemic issues, our democracy will remain deeply flawed.”