Governor’s race focuses on voting rights
In Georgia’s tight race for governor, Republican Brian Kemp is under assault by Democrat opponent Stacey Abrams and supporters accusing him of using his power as secretary of state to suppress minority voting to help his election chances — a charge refuted by Kemp, whose office handles voter registration and elections.
But this is a troublesome issue for Kemp, who is no doubt finding that wearing the secretary of state’s hat while running for governor has a downside. He has been put on the defensive, facing threats of more lawsuits on top of previous ones concerning an issue that has plagued his administration.
Abrams has called on Kemp to resign as secretary of state, labeling him an “architect of voter suppression,” citing an Associated Press report that his office put on hold more than 53,000 voter registration applications — about 70 percent from African-americans — for failing to comply with state law requiring an exact match of a voter application with a driver’s license or other state- mandated forms of identification.
Under the exact-match law, enacted by the Republican-controlled legislature in 2017, an application is held up if there is any discrepancy — such as a different address or missing or added initial to the name. If the match fails, the application is marked pending and the applicant is given 26 months to provide acceptable ID by mailing it in or presenting it at the polls.
But, according to Kemp’s campaign, voters still can cast provisional ballots, a reassurance cited by the ACLU. In a statement, the organization said Kemp’s office had confirmed that “if your voter registration application is deemed ‘pending’ because of the exact match law, you can still cast a regular ballot IF you provide photo identification at the polls which substantially reflects the name you used on your registration form.”
That, however, will by no means resolve the voting rights issue. Another part of this long-simmering controversy is Kemp’s purging of more than 1.4 million voters since 2012, including nearly 670,000 in 2017. Abrams, other Democrats and various voting rights groups have been up in arms over this and are pointing to it in support of their claim that Kemp is deliberately suppressing the minority vote to win the election.
Under state law, voters who have not voted or had contact with the election system for three years can be put on an inactive status and cut from the voter rolls if they fail to respond to notices confirming their address and vote in the next two general elections. In 2015, lawyers defending Kemp against a lawsuit by Common Cause said voters weren’t removed for not voting but for not having contact with election officials for a minimum of seven years and not returning “a postage prepaid pre-addressed return card to confirm their residence.”
Kemp’s defenders point to the bipartisan Help America Vote Act passed by Congress in 2001 requiring the purge of inactive voters by secretaries of state. And it’s noted that local officials in Georgia culled some 30,000 registration forms lacking the staterequired exact ID match; then Kemp’s office defended the rejections, many of them generated by a project Abrams organized to register voters – another big point of contention. Kemp has said the project was “sloppy” in filling out registration forms and “did not adequately train canvassers to ensure legible, complete forms.”
Blaming “outside agitators” for the voter registration controversy, Kemp on Wednesday proudly announced a new record of more than 6.9 million voters on the rolls by registration deadline — ironically including inactive voters.
“While outside agitators disparage this office and falsely attack us, we have kept our head down and remained focused on ensuring secure, accessible and fair elections for all voters,” Kemp said. “The fact is that it has never been easier to register to vote and get engaged in the electoral process in Georgia, and we are incredibly proud to report this new record.”
On this issue, there’s no middle ground for the candidates. The question is how it plays out with the voters in the middle, the independents, the undecided — a question that won’t be answered until Election Day.
Contact Don Mckee at 9613@aol.com.