state legislature. the county is about 250 square miles and doesn t have public transportation. officials there said consolidating polling places would be more efficient. the board of elections was set to hold a vote yesterday but local activists delayed it. cnn s dianne gallagher has more details. reporter: reverend denise freeman is on a mission. how y all doing? reporter: going door to door. i didn t know you stayed here. reporter: gathering signatures from voters. have you signed the petition? reporter: in an effort to stop the new board of elections from replacing all seven of the county s voting precincts with just one voting center, the complex in lincolnton, for the entire rural county. this is a huge county. people live so far away. we don t have public transportation. we don t have access to lyft or uber or taxicab.
who say they didn t get letters either. you know, this is not a partisan issue, this is a human issue. this is a issue that everyone should be afforded the luxury of voting. well said. we appreciate you coming on the show to talk about this issue. reverend denise freeman, will have to leave it there. thank you for your time. thank you for having me. god bless you. more to come here. including a blatant display of the for a public in democracy, and some high stakes diplomacy from america s top diplomat today. trying to head off what could become the biggest land or in europe since world war ii. stay with us. world war ii. stay you can get a car from any company, but none will make a difference like subaru.
bolton says the state played no role in the consolidation proposal. we had no influence from anybody. reporter: before a supreme court ruling gutted the voting rights act in 2013, closing polling places in georgia would have required federal approval to ensure it would not hurt minority voters. now, the five-person lincoln county board of elections can make the decision with a simple majority vote. the petition we are submitting meets the 20% threshold. reporter: but due to reverend freeman s efforts, the vote has been tabled, at least for now. we will not vote tonight. reporter: reverend freeman says she s not giving up. get off the fence! do the right thing! reporter: and warns that people should pay attention to election-related decisions in small counties. do you think this is a test run for bigger counties? i think this is a test run for the entire country. and dianne gallagher is with us now.
needs. i mean, i don t see how making things better is such a bad thing. reporter: but freeman, a former school board member, says most of the people she meets knocking on doors didn t know about the proposal until last month. she and other voting rights activists believe eliminating all but one precinct in a 250-square-mile county that s nearly 30% black in an election year is just another example of voter suppression in georgia. i think it s meant to disenfranchise people of color. i think it s meant to disenfranchise the poor. this is about good old boys, their power and their will to stay in control. this is not what fair elections are about. i don t want to disenfranchise anybody. nobody, from being able to vote. reporter: county commission chairman walker norman in lincoln county politics since he was 18, says more than half the county votes early and by mail,
happened with this board of elections meeting tonight. sounds like it got pretty heated and came to an abrupt end. yes, brianna, so this was supposed to be the meeting where they voted on this consolidation proposal. a lot of members of the community over the past couple of weeks, because of that petition, people going around and also because of local news coverage, are now familiar with the plan, and they showed up to the meeting to voice their frustrations. they ended up tabling that because of the petition that was delivered by reverend freeman and the other activists. but the community still wanted to speak out about it. this was not a public hearing, the board kept trying to say that, the people kept speaking anyway. they got a few of their comments in, the board started talking back, and people yelled suggestions and ideas at them and they abruptly ended the meeting, saying they would have another meeting that the public could attend in the near future. it s important that th