Secretary of State Brian Kemp of Georgia just stole the election for Governor, and got away scot-free. He beat Democrat Stacy Abrams by about 55,000 votes out of nearly four million cast. Kemp stole the election by using the power of his office to make sure that voters unlikely to support him in his gubernatorial race lost their franchise. The scheme went like this:
* In 2017, (from Greg Palast of Truthout), "Brian Kemp, Georgia’s secretary of state canceled the registrations of over half a million Georgians because they left the state or moved to another county. Except they didn’t. The nation’s top experts in address location reviewed Kemp’s list of purged voters — and returned the names and addresses of 340,134 who never moved at all."
How does the scam work? It's "purge by postcard," used in Georgia and other mostly Republican-controlled states, and it disproportionately affects poor and minority voters who tend to vote Democratic. Again from Greg Palast: "If you miss an election, Kemp sends you a postcard. It looks like junk mail. But if you read the block of print carefully, it asks you to return the card to Kemp after you’ve filled in the address that’s already on the front of the card."
"However, in June of this year, the Supreme Court said election officials can purge voters if they miss elections and don’t return that postcard, but only if the failure to return the postcard is a reasonable indication the voter has moved."
"Kemp has steadfastly refused to look at evidence that would show a voter has not moved. (Heck, Kemp didn’t even wonder why the purged voters paid Georgia taxes if they had left the state.)"
Note that voters do not receive any notification when they are purged.
* Kemp put 53,000 new voter registration applications, mostly from black voters, on hold using Georgia's "exact match" registration verification process, which requires information on voter applications to precisely match information on file with the Georgia Department of Driver Services or the Social Security Administration. "Mismatches" occur under the law, (from Shannon Van Sant of NPR, "for such reasons as missing hyphens, accent marks and middle initials. Those who are flagged can still vote ("provisonally") if they settle the discrepancy by providing proof of identity."
So let's say you try to vote provisionally. Guess what? That system is broken. When Phoebe Einzig-Roth went to vote in Georgia, from Eliza Carney of The American Prospect, "Einzig-Roth —who was born in New York and grew up in Boston—was told that "she might not be a citizen of the United States," and was directed to a supervising official. That official ultimately handed her a provisional ballot, but gave her no receipt, and no instructions on how to ensure that it would be counted. Einzig-Roth’s confusion turned to anger when she later tried to verify her eligibility, and was rebuffed for the lack of a receipt. "THIS is what voter suppression looks like in Georgia,” she fumed in a widely-circulated Facebook post."
More problems: (Again from Greg Palast on Salon.com)
"My team went to the campus of Emory University on Tuesday night, where nearly all the students who showed up to vote were black (although Emory is not a historically or predominantly black institution). Long lines kept the polls open until 10 p.m., and they ran out of provisional ballots by 4. When Kemp’s office sent over a stack, students filled out more than 100 provisionals in this precinct alone. And that was just one of thousands in the state."
"How many provisional ballots were cast in this election? Given the number of purged voters, given the arcane rule of "exact match" of driver’s license data and voter forms, given Georgia’s racially targeted voter ID laws – I could go on – it’s reasonable to project provisional ballots reaching 50,000."
"Then there are voters like Yasmin Bakhtiari of Atlanta, who tried to vote and was flatly denied even a provisional ballot — she asked three times within two hours — in direct violation of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA).
They tried to do that to Ashlee Jones in DeKalb County. She had registered to vote twice on Kemp’s website and got no confirmation. Jones was told she could not even get a provisional ballot. (I admit I got a little heavy with the precinct officials, and turned on the cameras. Jones got her provisional ballot. But that tiny victory was Pyrrhic: She knows Kemp or his replacement is likely to shred it.) Our researcher Rachel Garbus called several rural counties whose supervisors told her that no purged voter would get a provisional ballot, only those who "deserved" it. Having witnessed the scary Kemp-Trump rally last Sunday, I can tell you the color of "deserving" voters.
So far, it appears that most provisional ballots, and stacks of absentee ballots, have simply been rejected. Yet there is zero evidence that even one of these voters who signed their ballot envelopes under penalty of perjury is not a qualified voter."
Were Georgia's provisional ballots ultimately counted in a legal manner? It's not entirely clear. On the one hand, the state, to its credit, instructed county election officials to count absentee ballots even if they lack a voter’s date of birth, as long as the voter’s identity can be verified. But State Election Board member David Worley, a Democrat, said he was, "deeply disturbed" by the Secretary of State's instructions . "It makes it sound permissive, that counties can reject an absentee ballot if they want to," Worley said. "It’s a cheap, underhanded trick to allow some counties to reject ballots that federal law requires that they count. Frankly, I think it’s despicable."
* Finally Georgia doesn't ignore the classic voter suppression tactics. From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, "One-third of Georgia’s counties — 53 of 159 — have fewer precincts today than they did in 2012, according to the AJC’s count. Of the counties that have closed voting locations, 39 have poverty rates that are higher than the state average. Thirty have significant African-American populations, making up at least 25 percent of residents."
Though Stacy Abrams lost her race for Governor, she isn't giving up the fight for the right to vote in Georgia. From Richard Fausset of the New York Times, "Allies of Stacey Abrams, the Democrat who narrowly lost the Georgia governor’s race, filed a federal lawsuit on Tuesday calling for sweeping changes to the state’s election procedures, and accusing Brian Kemp, the Republican victor, of systematically disenfranchising poor and minority voters when he was secretary of state."
"The lawsuit...would seek "wide, large-scale reforms" to improve future elections. One of its demands is for renewed federal oversight to protect minority voting rights."
Lack of federal oversight is definitely a problem. In 2013, the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Acts, and the outcome has been predictable. Rob Arthur and Allison McCann of VICE.com noted recently that the end of federal oversight has precipitated the widespread closing of polling places in states where voter suppression was the norm during the 20th century:
"VICE News found that for every 10 polling places that closed in the rest of the country, 13 closed within the jurisdictions once under oversight. Policies that introduce barriers to voting — like Texas’ strict voter ID requirements and North Carolina’s elimination of same-day registration and limits on early voting — have been widely criticized for discouraging minority voters, who disproportionately vote Democratic. The vast majority of the jurisdictions once under federal supervision are in states with GOP leadership."
On a separate note, there's good news from another southern state with a long history of disenfranchising minority voters. Did you know that one out of every ten voting-age residents of Florida is a convicted felon? In that state "grand theft" of $300 or more is a felony, and felons permanently lose the right to vote. This has long been an easy way for Florida Republicans to keep the poor and minorities from voting. In November, Florida voters approved a ballot measure restoring voting rights to citizens convicted of certain felonies after they have served their sentences, including prison terms, parole and probationary periods. Florida Republicans are dragging their feet about implementing the new law, but appear to be resigned to let it go into effect.
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