Some Georgia voting machines aren’t counting votes for Democrat Stacey Abrams, NAACP says
By Emma Ockerman Oct 24, 2018
The NAACP is accusing election officials in Georgia of bungling votes in the gubernatorial race, saying in a complaint Tuesday that voting machines mistakenly showed votes intended for Democrat Stacey Abrams as votes for Republican Brain Kemp.
Voters were able to correct their ballots after repeated attempts, according to USA Today.
Abrams, who could become the first black, woman governor in the United States, has repeatedly accused Kemp — Georgia's current secretary of state — of voter suppression through purging rolls and holding up registrations. But the new NAACP complaints, first reported by USA Today and filed with the Secretary of State Office on Tuesday, purport to show how even successful, registered voters are facing trouble when they go to the polls for early voting.
Voters were able to correct their ballots after repeated attempts, according to USA Today.
Abrams, who could become the first black, woman governor in the United States, has repeatedly accused Kemp — Georgia's current secretary of state — of voter suppression through purging rolls and holding up registrations. But the new NAACP complaints, first reported by USA Today and filed with the Secretary of State Office on Tuesday, purport to show how even successful, registered voters are facing trouble when they go to the polls for early voting.
Voting advocates have already scrutinized Kemp’s suspension of more than 53,000 voter applications — 70 percent of them filed by black people — as they violated a controversial “exact match” standard,” which can hold voting records over misspelled words, incorrect addresses or misplaced hyphens.
The Georgia NAACP did not immediately respond to a VICE News request for comment.
The Georgia NAACP did not immediately respond to a VICE News request for comment.
The complaints concern voting machines in Bartow and Dodge counties, on behalf of eight voters. Voters told USA Today that they went to polling sites and tried to select Abrams, but the machines continued to mark their selections for Kemp. They had to try again several times before successfully voting for their intended candidate, according to USA Today.
Read: How the gutting of the Voting Rights Act led to hundreds of poll closures
Bartow and Dodge are predominantly white counties. However, past voter suppression claims have largely centered around black voters, some of whom have been purged from the state’s voter rolls, seen their registrations put on hold or have had to fight to keep polling sites open. The race between Kemp and Abrams is neck and neck — RealClearPolitics has Kemp slightly ahead but ranks the race a “toss-up” — and there are only two weeks left until Election Day.
A recent VICE News analysis found that since the Supreme Court gutted a key provision of the Voting Rights Act in 2013 — which once required federal oversight of certain local changes to voting — previously supervised jurisdictions shut down, on average, nearly 20 percent more polling stations per capita than jurisdictions in other parts of the country. Many of the polls closed in neighborhoods with large minority populations.
Bartow and Dodge are predominantly white counties. However, past voter suppression claims have largely centered around black voters, some of whom have been purged from the state’s voter rolls, seen their registrations put on hold or have had to fight to keep polling sites open. The race between Kemp and Abrams is neck and neck — RealClearPolitics has Kemp slightly ahead but ranks the race a “toss-up” — and there are only two weeks left until Election Day.
A recent VICE News analysis found that since the Supreme Court gutted a key provision of the Voting Rights Act in 2013 — which once required federal oversight of certain local changes to voting — previously supervised jurisdictions shut down, on average, nearly 20 percent more polling stations per capita than jurisdictions in other parts of the country. Many of the polls closed in neighborhoods with large minority populations.
“This farce about voter suppression and people being held up from being on the rolls … is absolutely not true,” Kemp said in a Tuesday debate with Abrams.
Kemp, a self-described “politically incorrect conservative” endorsed by President Donald Trump, told supporters at a campaign event last week that he was worried about Abrams’ attempts to increase voter turnout, according to leaked audio obtained by Rolling Stone.
“They have just an unprecedented number of that,” Kemp said of Abrams’ turnout efforts, “which is something that continues to concern us, especially if everybody uses and exercises their right to vote — which they absolutely can — and mail those ballots in, we gotta have heavy turnout to offset that.”
Georgia’s Kemp Purged 340,134 Voters, Falsely Asserting They Had Moved
- October 26, 2018
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- Last year, 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.John Lenser, CEO of CohereOne of San Rafael, California, led the team analyzing the purge list. He concluded, “340,000 of those voters remained at their original address. They should have never been removed from the voter registration rolls.”This is the story of the mass exodus from Georgia that never happened, and the mass purge of voters by Kemp, GOP candidate for governor, through methods guaranteed to disproportionately take away the vote from the young, the poor and voters of color.It began five years ago, when Kemp stonewalled my first requests for information on purges in Georgia, first for Al Jazeera and Rolling Stone, now for Truthout and Democracy Now! It took my lawyer’s threat of a federal lawsuit, filed last week in Atlanta federal court, to blast the list of the electorally doomed from Kemp’s hands.The files recorded 530,510 voters as moved from “inactive to cancelled.” We could not decode about 80,000 addresses — and discovered that 19,118 of the voters had passed away.And the rest of the voters of this supposed mass migration?The experts ran the names through an “advanced address hygiene process,” that is, digging through dozens — up to 200 — dynamically updated databases (such as cell phone bills and tax filings), as well as limited-access files at the post office, to get the location of voters. They accomplished this with astonishing accuracy — something the state of Georgia should have done.The result: GregPalast.com has a list of 340,134 voters who never moved an inch. Kemp has sent them no notice — none — but they have lost their right to vote.
- Last year, 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.John Lenser, CEO of CohereOne of San Rafael, California, led the team analyzing the purge list. He concluded, “340,000 of those voters remained at their original address. They should have never been removed from the voter registration rolls.”This is the story of the mass exodus from Georgia that never happened, and the mass purge of voters by Kemp, GOP candidate for governor, through methods guaranteed to disproportionately take away the vote from the young, the poor and voters of color.It began five years ago, when Kemp stonewalled my first requests for information on purges in Georgia, first for Al Jazeera and Rolling Stone, now for Truthout and Democracy Now! It took my lawyer’s threat of a federal lawsuit, filed last week in Atlanta federal court, to blast the list of the electorally doomed from Kemp’s hands.The files recorded 530,510 voters as moved from “inactive to cancelled.” We could not decode about 80,000 addresses — and discovered that 19,118 of the voters had passed away.And the rest of the voters of this supposed mass migration?The experts ran the names through an “advanced address hygiene process,” that is, digging through dozens — up to 200 — dynamically updated databases (such as cell phone bills and tax filings), as well as limited-access files at the post office, to get the location of voters. They accomplished this with astonishing accuracy — something the state of Georgia should have done.The result: GregPalast.com has a list of 340,134 voters who never moved an inch. Kemp has sent them no notice — none — but they have lost their right to vote.
Purge by Postcard
How did Kemp get away with this mass flushing of the voter rolls? I call it, “Purge by Postcard.”It wasn’t invented by Kemp. It’s used in dozens of states, mostly those controlled by Republican election chiefs.It works like this: 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.If you don’t return the card, and you miss an election, Kemp takes out his eraser and cancels you off the registration rolls.How can he do that? Legally savvy readers may know that the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 prohibits canceling the registration of a voter who chooses not to vote.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.)So, my foundation, the Palast Investigative Fund, did the work for him, having the experts review the list name by name.Warning: In addition to the 340,134 who never moved from their original registration addresses, Kemp wrongly purged thousands more who did move, but within their county, say, from one side of Savannah to another. (If you move within your county — you need not re-register; you should not be purged.)Another issue: use of Crosscheck, a list of voters who supposedly are registered in another Georgia and another state—evidence they’ve moved. In Truthout and Rolling Stone I’ve written extensively about this racially biased and factually challenged list created for Kemp by Kris Kobach of Kansas. (Kobach is another GOP secretary of state running for governor.) Despite Kemp’s denial, our experts found that 108,000 Georgia voters were also found on the Crosscheck list. Worse, careful review of post office files show 106,000 of these never left the state—yet lost their right to vote because of these supposed moves.Some did move, but into Georgia—a trick uncovered by none other than Stacey Abrams, Kemp’s opponent, who found that error on the Crosscheck list which I showed her for comment.One Savannah voter who was purged was targeted by Crosscheck for supposedly moving to Illinois. Mr. Mitchell (I’m withholding his first name*) called me upset because he’d actually moved fromIllinois to Georgia more than a decade ago.This one story has a happy ending. We’d listed all purged voters at GregPalast.com two days before close of registration—and Mr. Mitchell re-registered just in time.Jim Crow Is in the Cards
Another expert on our team, Mark Swedlund, is not surprised the postcard trick captures Black and poor voters disproportionately. “It doesn’t shock me at all. Response rates are lower among people of color, in particular among African-American renters,” he said.Swedlund, who advises companies like American Express and eBay about mailing techniques, made clear that demanding that voters send back a postcard to prove they haven’t moved is absurd.“Postcards are the weakest form of mailers to get a response,” Swedlund said. “If you use that as a basis for determining whether somebody moved or not, you would be making a very big mistake.”Mr. Mitchell saved his registration, but hundreds of thousands of voters will only find out they’ve been purged when they attempt to vote on November 6. They will be mollified with a “provisional” ballot. But it won’t be counted.In Georgia, if you were removed from the rolls, even wrongly, your vote won’t count. Call it Kemp’s rules.
https://truthout.org/articles/georgias-kemp-purged-340134-voters-falsely-asserting-they-had-moved/?utm_source=sharebuttons&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=mashshare&fbclid=IwAR3p-6oFspsZ3Oyxm9E2o4Hnzfvjnn8mRycVuqOq03t5x6dnFwsGr4zyqno
he Jim Crow GOP has stolen yet another Congressional election, this time in Georgia. As always, the media and Democrats are saying nothing about it.
