Georgia Sued Over Voter Registration Law Used to Exclude Blacks & Rig Elections for Dying White Votary
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From [HERE] Several civil rights organizations filed a lawsuit Thursday against Georgia Secretary of State and Republican nominee for governor Brian Kemp to stop enforcement of HB268, an election law that has placed a hold on over 50,000 registered voters.
HB268 has a provision that places pending status on any voter that has voter registration information that does not match their social security or driver’s license information. According to the complaint:
The protocol codified by HB 268, and implemented by Georgia’s Secretary of State, Defendant Brian Kemp, requires county registrars to enter information from a voter registration form into Georgia’s statewide voter registration system known as “Enet.” That information is then matched against records on file with the Georgia Department of Drivers Services (DDS) or Social Security Administration (SSA). If the information entered into “Enet” does not exactly match the applicant’s identity data on file with DDS or SSA, the application is placed in “pending” status. HB 268 places the burden upon the applicant to then cure the no match result within 26 months.
The complaint points out that merely forgetting a hyphen or double spacing could raise the pending status. Further, the plaintiffs contend that the regulation holds voters to “a strict ‘exact match’ standard, even though the matching protocol itself is not a model of strict accuracy and is prone to erroneous, inconsistent results that are often not the fault of the applicant.” The plaintiffs argue that the law disproportionately affects minorities and thus violates the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the First and Fourteenth Amendments and the National Voter Registration Act of 1993. Specifically, the plaintiffs say:
Between July 2013 and July 2015 alone, approximately 34,874 voter registration applications were cancelled as a result of a “no-match” against DDS and SSA records. Approximately 76.3% of the canceled applications were submitted by applicants who identified as African-American, Latino or Asian-American applicants while only 13.6% were submitted by applicants identifying as White.
Tuesday was the last day to register to vote in Georgia before the upcoming November election.
