According to a report earlier this week from The Associated Press, more than 53,000 voter registration applications have been sitting on hold in the office of Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp. The people on the list are predominantly black, and may not even know their voter registration has been held up.
Kemp oversees elections and voter registration in Georgia and is also the Republican candidate in his state’s governor’s race. His opponent, former state Rep. Stacey Abrams, and voting rights advocacy groups claim that Kemp is systematically using his office to carry out voter suppression, largely against minority voters.
Kemp’s office has cancelled more than 1.4 million voter registrations since 2012; nearly 670,000 registrations were cancelled in 2017 alone.
Many applications are being held up because of the state’s “exact match” verification process. Under this policy, an application could be held because of an entry error or even a dropped hyphen in a last name. Voter information must exactly match any information on file with Georgia Department of Driver Services or the Social Security Application.
According to an analysis obtained by The Associated Press, the list of voter registrations on hold with Kemp’s office is nearly 70 percent black even though Georgia’s population is about 32 percent black.
Both Stacey Abrams and Brian Kemp have responded to this news via Twitter.
Feels like deja vu: 4 years ago, Kemp tried to keep 40k new voters off the rolls. It took a few years, but we beat him. A few months ago, he tried to close polling places, but we beat him there too. Now he’s at it again, and we’ll beat him - again. 1/2 https://t.co/CDNcPantNE
— Stacey Abrams (@staceyabrams) October 11, 2018
The 53,000 Georgians on our pending list can vote this fall. Abrams is afraid to run on her extreme record so she manufactures outrage off a "problem" she created. She uses fear to fundraise and liberal billionaires continue to bankroll her corrupt enterprise. #gapol #gagop pic.twitter.com/UQpdurabG5
— Brian Kemp (@BrianKempGA) October 11, 2018
Read The Associated Press report here.
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