Abrams: GOP law is ‘voter suppression’
DALTON, Ga. — Democratic candidate for governor Stacey Abrams called for an end to a state law that filters voter registrations during a stop here Friday afternoon.
“The way voter suppression works is not just physically blocking you from voting,” she told a crowd outside the Mack Gaston Community Center. “It’s not just making you worried that you can’t vote. It’s bringing a sense of fear among everyone that their vote doesn’t matter. That’s how they win. But the thing of it is, if they thought your votes didn’t matter, they wouldn’t be working so hard to stop you.”
Abrams and her opponent, Republican Brian Kemp, have traded barbs over the state’s exact match law for more than a week, following news that 53,000 registered voters are in a sort of limbo. Citizens are purged from the rolls if the names on their voter registration applications do not match their driver’s licenses. They can be flagged for minor discrepancies, like if a hyphen appears on one form and not the other.
In an analysis, the Associated Press concluded that the state flagged black people much more often than whites. Despite making up about one-third of the state’s population, African American voters make up about 70 percent of people currently flagged.
Kemp, Georgia’s secretary of state, has overseen two versions of the exact match law since 2010. He balked at allegations that his office is racist or has tried to suppress votes. Since he took office, the number of registered voters in Georgia has grown from 5.8 million to 6.9 million. He also oversaw the creation of an online voter registration system and a voter registration app.
Even those flagged under the law still can vote this November. They need to bring a valid government ID, like their driver’s license. Still, the secretary of state’s office eventually will purge them from the rolls if voters don’t fix whatever issue the department found.
This fight dusts off a 4-year-old quarrel between Abrams and Kemp, who face each other in the Nov. 6 election. Voting rights and allegations of voter fraud are key divisions between the two candidates.
In 2014, Abrams oversaw the New Georgia Project, a massive voter registration effort that targeted young and minority voters. Though the organization registered about 85,000 voters, Abrams sued Kemp, alleging he slow-walked about half of their applications to keep them from voting in 2014.
Kemp denied the allegation. A judge sided with him, saying he didn’t have to add every registered voter before the election, even if they registered before the deadline. The exact match law was the key linchpin in that fight — basically, it gave Kemp legal justification to slow the process of reviewing the applications. He argued it protected the state from voter fraud.
After that election, his office added 18,000 of the New Georgia Project’s pending applications to the voter rolls. But according to a federal lawsuit, his office denied about 34,000 applications between 2013 and 2016, using the exact match law. A federal lawsuit followed, and Kemp settled in February 2017.
Weeks later, Republicans in the state legislature voted
to re-create the exact match law. The new law extended how long voters had to correct any potential problems from 30 days to two years. That explains why the 53,000 people now in limbo can vote.
“And once again, the same discriminatory behavior was noticed,” Abrams said Friday, citing the AP’s analysis.
In turn, Kemp attacked Abrams over the exact match controversy.
“Her dark money voter registration group submitted sloppy forms,” he tweeted on Oct. 10. “Now, they are faking outrage for political gain.”
The fight was not limited to exact match, though. In September 2014, Kemp sent a subpoena to the New Georgia Project over some registrations, sparking a three-year-long investigation. A spokesman for his office said at the time that they found “significant proof of fraud.” Kemp said some registrations appeared to be forged or not accurately filled out.
Abrams, meanwhile, told the Atlanta Journal Constitution in 2014 that she kept Kemp’s office in the loop about her registration efforts throughout that summer. She said she knew some registrations were not done properly. But state law requires organizations to submit the applications to
county registrars anyway. State officials are supposed to vet them.
Three years later, an investigator for the secretary of state’s office concluded the New Georgia Project did not commit fraud. He identified 53 allegedly forged applications, which he said were the result of 14 bad actors. They were not high-up members of the organization, he said. They were essentially independent contractors, paid by outside companies that partnered with the New Georgia Project.
Pundits say the race between Abrams and Kemp is tight. Five-Thirty-Eight, a website that aggregates multiple polls, placed Georgia as a “toss up” on Wednesday.
During her speech in Dalton, Abrams told the crowd that polls don’t pick up on her secret weapon — an uprising of new, enthusiastic voters.
“The polls are looking for those who always show up — show up rain or shine, show up presidential or midterm,” she said. “They are looking for likely voters. And even when we’re looking at likely voters, we’re in a dead heat. But you see, I’m not counting on just likely voters. I’m counting on unlikely voters.”