Repeatedly knocking on the office door of Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp got one state lawmaker arrested at the Capitol on Thursday.
Democratic state Rep. Park Cannon, a Black woman, continued knocking on Kemp’s office door after Georgia State Patrol troopers instructed her to stop.
She said later she was arrested for “fighting voter suppression.” A law signed by Kemp on Thursday includes new limitations on mail-in voting, expands most voters’ access to in-person early voting and caps a months-long battle over voting in a battleground state.
It has been heavily criticized as a bill that would end up disenfranchising Black voters. It’s also seen as Republicans’ rebuke of the November and January elections in which the state’s Black voters led the election of two Democrats to the Senate.
Cannon is facing a charge of obstructing law enforcement officers by use of threats or violence and she faces a second charge of disrupting general assembly sessions or other meetings of members.
It’s unclear what was said between Cannon and one state trooper guarding Kemp’s office door.
Georgia State Patrol spokesman Lt. W. Mark Riley told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that Cannon “was advised that she was disturbing what was going on inside and if she did not stop, she would be placed under arrest.”
