Voter suppression in Georgia

As has been widely reported now, both locally and nationally, the state of Georgia's voter registration office has put on hold 53,000 registrations as not being valid because of some (often insignificant) error.    Or, often, not even an error but just a minor inconsistency with other state records, like drivers licenses, in which one uses a middle initial and the other record spells out the middle name.

What makes this even more outrageous is that the Secretary of State, Brian Kemp, whose office is in charge of registration and elections, is also the Republican candidate for Governor of Georgia.   Thus he is in charge of oversight of the election in which he is running for the highest profile office.

A while back Kemp announced that he would turn over day to day operations concerning the registration and the election to his second in command, a man who shares Kemp's zeal for rooting out the dubious claim of "voter fraud."   So the fox may officially step aside, but he puts his protege in his place.

The outrage is further compounded by the fact that, of these 53,000 on-hold registrations, 70% of them are African-Americans, compared to Georgia's population, which is about 35% black.   Why?  For one thing, it's in the black community that the most vigorous voter-registration drives have been conducted.

The main factor, however, seems to be the "perfect match" program that Kemp insists on using.    For example:   If someone moves from one street to another and lists the new address as, say, "N. Spring St." instead of "North Spring Street," that would be put on hold.     Or if a married woman, combining hers and her husband's last names, has a drivers license that lists her as "Julia Louis Dreyfus," but she filled out the voter registration application as "Julia Louis-Dreyfus," that would be thrown out too -- because that little hyphen makes it not a perfect match for other state records.

Now this does not automatically mean she cannot vote.    When they get around to it, they will send her a text asking her to clarify.    But suppose this particular person does not use text communications?    Not everyone does.    Or she can vote by provisional ballot on election day, and later (within a time limit) she has to go to the courthouse and clear up any discrepancy so her vote can be counted.

Another bit of mischief carried out in purging voter roles of no longer active voters is to send a postcard to the registrant's last recorded mailing address and ask for a reply to indicate that they still live at that address.    Simply not getting a response from that post card mailing leads to the assumption that the person no longer lives at that address;   hence the voting information is invalid, and he can no longer vote unless he clears it up.

The problem I see with this:    With all the junk mail flooding out daily delivery, who scrutinizes a post card enough to know it is something legitimate that must be responded to?     I'm pretty quick to sort my mail into junk (into the garbage can or recycling) and personal mail that needs attending to.

My point here is that this is a system that obviously is designed to cut as many people from the voting rolls as possible -- and it is used in such a way to target those groups whom the people in power would rather not have vote -- minorities who tend to vote for Democrats.

Add into this the photo-ID laws, the gerrymandering, closings of voting precincts, reduction of voting hours, along with these looking for ways to manipulate the electorate.    Our laws should encourage voting, not suppress it.

And PLEASE NOTE:   Everything I've been discussing above is done by official, tax-payer-paid government employees.    The whole area of political dirty tricks is another whole problem area (such as sending out notices urging people to vote, but listing the wrong voting places, or the hours polls are open, etc.

Ralph