While we were distracted with Kavanaugh’s appointment, the impending hurricane, and disappearing journalists, Brian Kemp, Georgia’s Secretary of State is quietly sitting on more than 53,000 voter registration applications, according to an Associated Press report cited by The Hill.
Why is Brian Kemp, the current Secretary of State for Georgia sitting on so many ballots? Because he’s running for governor and his opponent is Stacey Abrams, the phenomenal woman who won the Georgia Democratic primary in May to become the first first black woman to be a major party nominee for governor in the United States. And what voter registrations are Kemp sitting on? You guessed it! Voter registrations from POC:
His Democratic opponent, former state Rep. Stacey Abrams, and voting rights advocacy groups charge that Kemp is systematically using his office to suppress votes and tilt the election, and that his policies disproportionately affect black and minority voters.
Kemp denies that he has any nefarious motives and claims that “Abrams and liberal groups are playing political games a month before the election”. REALLY??!!
I don’t know the GA “exact match” law that he’s using, but hopefully the GA ACLU does.
Here’s Maddow’s coverage of this story:
Per TrueBlueMajority (who coached me on this … thank you so much), Kemp did the same thing in 2014.
Thursday, Oct 11, 2018 · 2:59:06 AM +00:00 · Glinda
According to the WaPo, “exact match” has drawn much criticism:
Two main policies overseen by Kemp have drawn criticism and legal challenges: Georgia’s “exact match” registration verification process and the mass cancellation of inactive voter registrations.
According to records obtained from Kemp’s office through a public records request, Appling-Nunez’s application —like many of the 53,000 registrations on hold with Kemp’s office — was flagged because it ran afoul of the state’s “exact match” verification process.
Under the policy, information on voter applications must precisely match information on file with the Georgia Department of Driver Services or the Social Security Administration. Election officials can place non-matching applications on hold.
An application could be held because of an entry error or a dropped hyphen in a last name, for example.
So a clerical error in an entry is enough to knock you off the voting rolls, according to the “exact match” law. Voter suppression at its finest!