TRUMP & THE GOP ARE TRYING TO STOP THE NATION’S EVOLUTION

…This is the Democratic Candidate for Georgia Governor, Stacey Abrams

Georgia has a classic voter suppression law called “Exact Match” that is affecting over 40,000 minority voters.

In the Georgia governor’s race, a coalition of civil rights groups have sued the Secretary of State, Brian Kemp, in his official capacity, over a 2017 voting law that is hampering the registrations of more than 50,000 Georgians. It is estimated that approximately 80% of the potential voters are black, Latino or Asian American.  This is according to the lawsuit, filed in a federal court in Atlanta. 

How Brian Kemp, is being allowed to over-see his own candidacy as a Republican gubernatorial candidate is amazing.  Kemp has been hit with the lawsuit claiming that his office is jeopardizing the voting rights of tens of thousands of minority Georgians, a controversy that has led his Democratic opponent’s campaign to call for his resignation.

The law in question, is a classic voter suppression tactic called “Exact Match”.  This law requires all election officials to flag and pause any voter registration application, if the identifying information on their photo-ID doesn’t precisely match the voting information in their existing records.  Even if something as small as a missing hyphen or a transposed letter or house number is shown between the ID and the voter info. 

Of course, it's the African Americans and other minority communities that normally have differences and hyphens in their names, so they are the ones that are most affected.

It is true that these the voters are not barred from casting a ballot, but they must take extra steps and documents to verify their identities.  It must be stated that if these voter are allowed to fill out a “Provisional Ballot”, historically 50% of the state’s provisional ballots are not allowed to be counted for one reason or another.

Kemp, who is locked in a tight race against a highly qualified African American, Democratic nominee Stacey Abrams, he is the state’s Sec. of State, that is tasked with carrying out this voting law in his role.  This has led Democrats to accuse Kemp of attempts to suppress the minority vote to gain an edge in the election.  A campaign that is statistically a toss-up at this point.

Stacey Abrams’s campaign called on Kemp to resign as secretary of state “so that Georgia voters can have confidence that their Secretary of State competently and impartially oversee this election,” spokeswoman Abigail Collazo said this in a statement to CNN.  Abrams, a former state representative and founder of a voting rights advocacy group, would become the first female black governor in the nation’s history if she wins.

Of course, as expected, Mr. Kemp has denied any allegations of any impropriety or voting rights violations.  He characterized the accusations from Abrams and the Democrats as misleading and a manufactured problem.  He emphasized that Georgia has “shattered its all-time voter registration record this year”, with more than 6.8 million voters.

What he failed to say is that the reason for the “shattered record” was that the Democrats are very energized about Ms. Abrams, and the African American Democrats in Georgia could be the winning margin for Abrams.  The combination of Georgia’s black Democrats, with Georgia’s white Dems, is larger than all the white Georgian Republican voters.

The spokeswoman for the secretary of state’s office, said in a statement to The Washington Post that the claims in the lawsuit are “bogus” and amount to a political stunt. She said the affected voters have been notified about how to contact local officials to fix their pending registration applications.  As expected, there was no explanation for what makes the lawsuit “bogus”, or why it was being called a “political stunt”.

The so-called ‘Exact Match’ law was passed by the Republican run Legislature and signed by the Republican Gov. Nathan Deal. (Nathan Deal was a Democratic US Representative until 1995 ,when he then changed parties to the GOP.)  This new law mirrors a Florida law “recently upheld in federal court,” the spokesperson said. “The 53,000 Georgians cited in the complaint can vote in the Nov. 6 election.  Any claims to the contrary are politically motivated and utterly false.”  

Well, this is partially true, but remember they might just be required to fill out a provisional vote, of which 50% of the votes may not be counted.

The lawsuit, filed by the Georgia State Conference of the NAACP, New Georgia Project, Asian-Americans Advancing Justice - Atlanta and others, comes on the heels of an Associated Press report that revealed the 53,000 voter applications were on hold in Georgia because of the “exact match” law.

Only 32% of Georgia’s population is black, but isn’t it interesting that somehow, of all of the voters whose registrations were on hold, 70% are black & minorities.  This is according to the AP’s report.

Some liberal publication and blogs are saying that the Republicans may actually be trying to steal the governor’s election in Georgia.

Here’s the way the law works:  Under the law, if voters are flagged for typos or errors in their applications, they have 26 months to correct the information with local officials, otherwise their registration application may be totally canceled. If the Election Day falls in that 26-month time period and their application is still in limbo, these voters can still go to the polls and cast those provisional ballots that may not be counted

The voting rights advocates argue that the Georgia law serves no legitimate purpose to the state and is contrary to all the federal voting laws.

All the law accomplishes, most attorneys argue, is placing an extra burden on the overwhelmingly majority of minority voters.

“It’s a strain on our system of democracy when less than a month before an election, which could produce the first African American female governor in our nation’s history, we are seeing this type of voter suppression scheme attempted by a state official, whose candidacy for the governorship produces an irremediable conflict of interest,” NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson said in a statement.

The lawsuit makes Georgia the latest battleground over voting rights at a time when the nation’s Republicans are backing strict voter ID laws nationwide, saying they are necessary to protect the integrity of elections.

Just this week, a North Dakota law requiring residents to provide proof of a residential street address to vote, even though most Native Americans, who use PO Boxes, do not have such addresses.  The law  was upheld when their highly conservative state Supreme Court refused to intervene.  The Arkansas Supreme Court also recently upheld a law requiring voters to show photo ID at the polls or else cast a provisional ballot.

In both cases, challengers argued the laws would have a disproportionate impact on minority voters, as the attorneys argued in the Georgia lawsuit.

“My opponent manufactured a ‘crisis’ to fire up her supporters and fund raise from left wing radicals throughout the country,” Kemp said in a Tweet, linking it to a photo of an apparent campaign message from Abrams accusing Kemp of suppressing the black vote.

This is not the first time Kemp has been sued over the “exact match” practices. Before it was a law, Kemp’s office enforced an administrative “exact match” policy that canceled people’s voter registration applications if errors or typos in their applications weren’t corrected within 40 days.  Nearly 35,000 people’s applications were canceled between 2013 and 2015 alone, and 76% of those people were minorities, according to the lawsuit.

Kemp reached a settlement with civil rights groups in 2016 that abandoned the 40-day deadline. The following year, legislators wrote Kemp’s policy into law, but adding the 26-month deadline.

Many Red state’s legislation's are attempting to pass these kind of voter suppression laws across the country.  It’s just one more example of the American white community trying to suppress the fact that the demographics of this country are changing and the conservative Republicans just don’t like it.

The demographics of America has been changing ever since its inception in 1776, and some Americans are trying to stop something that is not in their control, but they will continue trying.

Let's hope they fail.

Copyright G. Ater 2018