Georgia was readmitted into the union after ratifying its 1865 state constitution. To comply with the federal mandates of Reconstruction, a Georgia Constitutional Convention was held from Dec. 9, 1867 to March 1868 with some 33 African American and 137 white delegates. The federally sanctioned convention drafted a new Constitution that forbade disenfranchisement and guaranteed suffrage for Black males. The new Constitution also abolished imprisonment for debt and eliminated poll taxes—practices that exploited formerly enslaved Blacks. Conservatives lamented the “negro-radical” convention because it threatened to grant Black Americans equal status to white men. The elections following the 1868 Constitution yielded the “original 33,” the first 33 Black men to be elected to Georgia’s general state assembly. The victory was short lived. In August of that year, white Democrats proposed a resolution to deny Black men eligibility to serve in Georgia’s state legislature. The legally elected Black representatives were expelled and replaced with white men.
Though the expulsion was ultimately ruled unconstitutional, white supremacists would continue to attempt to disenfranchise Black Americans. Democrats had regained control of many southern states by 1870, making several, including Georgia, one-party legislatures. Georgia’s 1877 Constitution left the selection of the governor to the General Assembly, and barred Black Americans from voting in Democratic primaries, creating what were called “white primaries.” Other southern states did the same. It wasn’t until April 1946 that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that “white primaries” were unconstitutional. After the ruling, Black voter registration increased from approximately 20,000 in 1940 to 125,000 in 1947.
In 1917, the Georgia legislature adopted the county unit system for all primary elections. Instead of “one man, one vote,” the county unit system was a statewide electoral college that gave smaller rural counties, which were mainly white, control over selecting the state legislature. This sham structure in Georgia’s faux Democracy would set the stage for these small counties to hold a monopoly on political power in Georgia that continues to this day. Georgia’s 159 counties were divided into three categories: The eight most populated counties were designated as “urban” and were given six unit votes each. Each of the next thirty populated counties or “towns” were given four unit votes, and the 121 remaining “rural” counties were given two unit votes. The candidate who received the most popular votes in a county received all of that county’s unit votes. The county unit system meant that the 121 rural counties held 59 percent of the overall vote and had the power to decide the state legislature. Because Georgia was virtually a one-party state—the Republican party was not even considered a contender—general elections were decided at the primary stage.