Georgia’s voter registration process violates the Voting Rights Act and disenfranchises tens of thousands of minorities, according to a federal lawsuit filed Wednesday.
A 2010 policy implemented by Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp, who was named as the defendant in the lawsuit, prevents Georgia citizens from being added to the voter rolls unless all identifying information on their voter registration application exactly matches information in certain state databases.
According to Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, voter registration applications are not properly processed and thus eligible voters are at risk of not being added to the rolls.
The policy affects “a disproportionate number of African-American, Latino and Asian-American because many of the databases maintained by the state are riddled by errors,” Clarke told reporters in a conference call on Wednesday. She added that name discrepancies such as a hyphen or apostrophe, or even a computer glitch, can be reasons for rejections by Georgia.
This process, Clarke said, “has proven fatal for many of those would-be minority voters.”
The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law was joined by other legal organizations such as Project Vote and the Georgia Coalition for the Peoples’ Agenda in the lawsuit, filed Wednesday in North Georgia.
If the voter registration does not match the information found in the databases kept by the Department of Driver Services or the Social Security Administration, a notifying letter is sent to the Georgia applicant. If the applicant doesn’t respond within 40 days, the application is automatically cancelled and the applicant must start all over. A slew of factors can prevent the applicant from being able to fix the issues, such as inadequate access to mail or not understanding what the problem is.
The lawsuit asked the judge to say the registration process violates the Voting Rights Act. It also wants the judge to allow the applications of those who have not replied to the notifying letter within 40 days not to be cancelled, and to allow those whose applications weren’t processed or were cancelled to be able to vote in November with the right form of identification.
According to the New Georgia Project, as the population of Georgia continues to grow, so does the “new American majority” — people of color, those ages 18 to 29 and unmarried women. The new American majority reportedly make up 62 percent of the voting age population in Georgia, but they are only 53 percent of registered voters.
Kemp’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
