Georgia Secretary Of State Caught Blocking 53,000 Black Votes

0
1158

The state of Georgia has an opportunity to make history by electing their very first black female governor in November. Stacy Abrams’ challenger and the incumbent governor, Jack Kemp, is up by only two points over Abrams in the polls, so the election there really is a dead heat. What could push Abrams over the edge on election day is black voter turnout.

Governor Kemp, who is in charge of voter registration in Georgia, appears to have found a way to assure that won’t happen.

‘Through a process that Kemp calls voter roll maintenance and his opponents call voter roll purges, Kemp’s office has cancelled over 1.4 million voter registrations since 2012. Nearly 670,000 registrations were cancelled in 2017 alone.’

The 53,000 names on the list in Kemp’s office, according to The Associated Press, are “predominantly black” voters. In fact, more than 37,000 of them are black voters.

According to The Washington Post, Kemp denies that the pile of unapproved voter registrations have anything to do with race and that the same laws making it legal for him to deny these citizens the right to vote apply to everyone. That doesn’t explain, however, how “Georgia’s population is approximately 32 percent black, according to the U.S. Census, but the list of voter registrations on hold with Kemp’s office is nearly 70 percent black.”

Kemp’s office responded to the news of AP‘s analysis:

‘His campaign spokesman Ryan Mahoney said in a statement that because of Kemp, “it has never been easier to vote in our state” and pointed to a new online voter registration system and a student engagement program implemented under his tenure.

‘“Kemp is fighting to protect the integrity of our elections and ensure that only legal citizens cast a ballot,” Mahoney said.’

What his office did not answer, however, is why there are questions about the legal citizenship of over 37,000 black voters and so few questions about anyone else in Georgia.

Featured image via Flickr by Scott Peale under a Creative Commons license