Georgia faces a lawsuit over its efforts to block newly registered voters from the upcoming run-off in the 6th Congressional District. According to Georgia, it’s not enough to be registered to vote 30 days ahead of a run-off election—you have to have been registered 30 days ahead of the pre-run-off election. That upswell of enthusiasm for Jon Ossoff? It can’t be turned into new voter registrations, says Georgia. The five civil rights groups filing suit against that law say otherwise, and they say they’re confident they’ll win:
On Thursday, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law filed a complaint in the federal district court in Atlanta, arguing that the state is violating the National Voter Registration Act. That law sets 30 days before a federal election as the earliest permissible deadline for voter registration. [...]
Ezra Rosenberg, co-director of the voting rights project at the Lawyers’ Committee, argues that under the federal law, Georgia can’t set the registration deadline for the June 20 runoff any earlier than 30 days before that election ― that is, May 22.
“The case is actually a very, very simple case,” Rosenberg told reporters on a conference call Thursday. “Federal law specifically defines elections as including runoff elections.”
Georgia’s position is like saying that to vote in a general election you have to have been registered in time for the primary, and it means that only people registered before March 20 can vote in a June 20 run-off. If the registration deadline is 30 days before the run-off, Democrats and the Ossoff campaign can keep registering new voters until May 22. It doesn’t take a political genius to see why the Republicans who run Georgia would want to keep that from happening.
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