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Aug 24 2018

Randolph County Chair Bobby Jenkins Responds to Board Decision to Keep All Polling Locations Open

RANDOLPH COUNTY, GA – Today, Randolph County Democratic Party Chair Bobby Jenkins issued the following statement:

“We are thrilled that all nine polling locations will remain open to Randolph County voters, and we express our heartfelt gratitude to citizens and advocate groups across Georgia who stood up and protected our cherished right to vote. While today’s decision is something to celebrate, we shouldn’t forget how we got here. We have a Secretary of State, Brian Kemp, who is engaged in voter suppression. Worse, he is engaged in voter suppression in an election in which he is a candidate. Now that we have fought to protect the right to vote, we must encourage people to use that power. We must encourage our friends and neighbors to vote for Stacey Abrams, Sarah Riggs Amico, Joyce Barlow, who is running for House District 151 that includes Randolph County, and other Democrats across Georgia. We will continue to reject voter suppression tactics, and we will stop voter suppressors like Brian Kemp from running our state.”

BACKGROUND:

Mike Malone, an associate and donor of Brian Kemp, consulted with the Randolph County Board of Elections following a recommendation by Kemp’s office earlier this year.  

Kemp, according to Malone, directed his associate to recommend polling closures across Georgia. Kemp claimed to oppose the Randolph County polling location closures; however, audio evidence highly suggests that Kemp himself directed Malone to recommend these closures. 

Malone recommended closing seven of the nine Randolph County polling locations due to non-compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Disability and voting rights advocates decried the proposal, and Malone was fired by the county after his blatant attempts to suppress votes. Randolph County’s population is majority African American.

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Written by PNM Admin · Categorized: Press Releases · Tagged: Bobby Jenkins, Brian Kemp, Randolph County, Voter Suppression

Sep 20 2017

Brian Kemp’s Cheap Political Parlor Tricks

Atlanta, GA – Just days before National Voter Registration Day, Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp is once again abusing his office for political gain by pushing voter suppression efforts that disproportionately affect the elderly, communities of color, and low-income voters. Now mounting a bid for governor, Georgia’s Chief Election Officer has waged a war against ballot access that would make Kris Kobach proud.

“Brian Kemp would no doubt prefer folks pay attention to voter fraud witch hunts than examine his record. Just like Kris Kobach and Donald Trump, Kemp has spent his career lying about voter fraud in an attempt to suppress the votes of working families and minority communities. Such a fundamental right should not be a partisan issue—this is about our democracy and our American values.” – Michael Smith, Communications Director

While Kemp’s record of mismanagement and incompetence spans years, one needs to look no further than this very year:

For Second Time in Two Years, Millions of Georgia Voters Left Vulnerable in Data Breach. The FBI opened an investigation at Kennesaw State University’s Center for Election System for an alleged data breach. 7.5 million Georgia voter records may have been involved. In 2015, Brian Kemp’s office disclosed the social security numbers and other personal information of more than six million voters. [The Atlanta Journal Constitution, 3/3/17]

Technology Experts Call for Paper Ballots in Georgia Amid Suspected Cyber Attack, Data Breach, and Vulnerable Voting Machines. The organization Verified Voting expressed concern with Georgia’s lack of paper ballots to verify machine voting. [The Associated Press, 3/14/2017]

 

In Advance of GA-06 Special Election, Kemp Sued by Five Civil Rights and Civic Engagement Groups. The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the Georgia NAACP, and others, filed a federal lawsuit arguing that the state violated the National Voter Registration Act by setting the voter registration deadline for the runoff election in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District for 3 months before the election. Under federal law, Georgia cannot set the registration deadline any earlier than 30 days before the election. [Huffington Post, 4/21/2017]

Judge Rules Kemp Violated Voter Registration Act, Re-Opens Voter Registration Period Ahead of GA-06 Special Election. U.S. District Judge Timothy Batten struck down the early voter registration deadline as part of a broader lawsuit brought by the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the Georgia NAACP, and others, accusing Georgia of violating federal law by reducing the amount of time residents have to register to vote. [New York Magazine, 5/5/2017]

Kemp Complies with Trump Administration’s Request For Georgia Voter Information. In the aftermath of President Trump’s unsubstantiated claim that millions voted illegally in the 2016 election, Kemp complied with the Administration’s commission on election integrity request for Georgia voter information, while many other states announced their intentions to refuse the request. [The Atlanta Journal Constitution, 6/30/17]

Georgia Begins Phasing In Paper Balloting To Address Vulnerable Voting Machines.  In the aftermath of a suspected cyber attack, Georgia will utilize paper ballots in an upcoming municipal election in Conyers, Georgia as a pilot effort. The effort comes as experts warn against machine only voting. [The Atlanta Journal Constitution, 9/5/17]

Trump’s DHS Chief Derides Holdout States Like Georgia for Not Accepting Cybersecurity Assistance. Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly said states that aren’t asking Washington for help in protecting their election systems from hackers are “nuts.” [Politico, 7/19/17]

More information on Brian Kemp’s record can be found here.

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Written by PNM Admin · Categorized: Georgia Democrats, Georgia Republicans, Georgia Voter Protection Hotline, Press Releases · Tagged: Brian Kemp, Georgia elections, Kris Kobach, Voter Suppression, Voting Rights, Voting Rights Act

Aug 04 2016

Georgians’ Right to Vote Under Attack… AGAIN

“This brazen attack on our fundamental right to vote is yet another example of the Republican Party bending the rule of law to fit their partisan agenda. Using our voice at the ballot box is one of the most important things we do as citizens. If the GOP wishes to win elections, then they should win on the issues, not restrict access to the polls. Georgia Democrats are more committed than ever to not only fight these brazen attacks on our liberties, but expand access and ensure that every eligible voter in this state plays a key role in our democracy.” –Pinney Allen, Chair of the DPG Voter Protection Committee

 

 

From the NYT:

When the deputy sheriff’s patrol cruiser pulled up beside him as he walked down Broad Street at sunset last August, Martee Flournoy, a 32-year-old black man, was both confused and rattled. He had reason: In this corner of rural Georgia, African-Americans are arrested at a rate far higher than that of whites.

But the deputy had not come to arrest Mr. Flournoy. Rather, he had come to challenge Mr. Flournoy’s right to vote.

The majority-white Hancock County Board of Elections and Registration was systematically questioning the registrations of more than 180 black Sparta citizens — a fifth of the city’s registered voters — by dispatching deputies with summonses commanding them to appear in person to prove their residence or lose their voting rights. “When I read that letter, I was kind of nervous,” Mr. Flournoy said in an interview. “I didn’t know what to do.”

The board’s aim, a lawsuit later claimed, was to give an edge to white candidates in Sparta’s municipal elections — and that November, a white mayoral candidate won a narrow victory.

“A lot of those people that was challenged probably didn’t vote, even though they weren’t proven to be wrong,” said Marion Warren, a Sparta elections official who documented the purges and raised an alarm with voting-rights advocates. “People just do not understand why a sheriff is coming to their house to bring them a subpoena, especially if they haven’t committed any crime.”

The county attorney, Barry A. Fleming, a Republican state representative, said in an interview that the elections board was only trying to restore order to an electoral process tainted earlier by corruption and incompetence. The lawsuit is overblown, he suggested, because only a fraction of the targeted voters were ultimately scratched from the rolls.

“The allegations that people were denied the right to vote are the opposite of the truth,” he said. “This is probably more about politics and power than race.”

But the purge of Sparta voters is precisely the sort of electoral maneuver that once would have needed Justice Department approval before it could be put in effect. In Georgia and all or part of 14 other states, the 1965 Voting Rights Act required jurisdictions with histories of voter discrimination to receive so-called preclearance before changing the way voter registration and elections were conducted.

Three years ago, the Supreme Court declared the preclearance mandate unconstitutional, saying the blatant discrimination it was meant to prevent was largely a thing of the past.

But since the Supreme Court’s 5-to-4 ruling in the voting-rights case, Shelby County v. Holder, critics argue, the blatant efforts to keep minorities from voting have been supplanted by a blizzard of more subtle changes. Most conspicuous have been state efforts like voter ID laws or cutbacks in early voting periods, which critics say disproportionately affect minorities and the poor. Less apparent, but often just as contentious, have been numerous voting changes enacted in counties and towns across the South and elsewhere around the country.

They appear as Republican legislatures and election officials in the South and elsewhere have imposed statewide restrictions on voting that could depress turnout by minorities and other Democrat-leaning groups in a crucial presidential election year. Georgia and North Carolina, two states whose campaigns against so-called voter fraud have been cast by critics as aimed at black voters, could both be contested states in autumn’s presidential election.

Kristen Clarke, the president of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a leading voting-rights advocacy group, said that before the Supreme Court’s Shelby County ruling, discriminatory laws and procedures had been blocked by the preclearance provisions.

Now, she said, “We’re seeing widespread proliferation of these laws. And we are left only with the ability to mount slow, costly case-by-case challenges” to their legality.

Conservative critics of the Voting Rights Act say that is as it should be — that the federal government has no business usurping the role of elections monitor that citizen advocates have long and effectively played in other states. “Now every jurisdiction in the country must be treated equally in our courts when election issues are at stake,” said Edward Blum, the director of the Project on Fair Representation, a nonprofit legal program.

The local voting changes have often gone unnoticed and unchallenged. A June survey by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund found that governments in six former preclearance states have closed registration or polling places, making it harder for minorities to vote. Local jurisdictions in six more redrew districts or changed election rules in ways that diluted minorities’ votes.

Alabama moved last year to close 31 driver’s license offices, almost all in rural areas with large African-American populations, as a cost-saving measure. After lawsuit threats and complaints that the closings would severely curtail local voter registration, the state chose to open the offices at least one day a month. Gov. Robert J. Bentley, a Republican, has strongly denied that the closings were racially motivated.

In Hernando County, Fla.; Cleveland and Watauga Counties in North Carolina; Baldwin County, Ala.; and elsewhere, elections officials eliminated or moved polling places in largely minority districts; a state court overturned the Watauga County closure.

The Republican majority in North Carolina’s General Assembly redrew the political districts last year in Wake County, whose main city is Raleigh, concentrating black voters in the city center into a single voting district. (A three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled that map unconstitutional.) In Pasadena, Tex., officials eliminated two District Council seats in largely Hispanic areas in 2014 and replaced them with at-large seats chosen largely by white voters. Hispanic voters have filed a federal lawsuit seeking to undo the change.

In Macon-Bibb County, Ga., in February, the elections board moved a polling place in a predominantly black neighborhood from a gymnasium that was being renovated to the county sheriff’s office. Officials changed the location to a church after a petition drive legally forced a reversal.

While those changes took place in states that once were wholly or partly under Justice Department supervision, other restrictions have been adopted by mostly Republican legislatures and election officials in states never cited for voting discrimination. Wisconsin’s unusually stringent photo ID law is the object of a federal lawsuit. A South Dakota county is in litigation over equal access to its polling places for Native Americans.

The effect on voter turnout is impossible to measure, but Ms. Clarke of the Lawyers’ Committee offers one barometer: So far in the 2016 primary election cycle, an election hotline run by the committee and others has fielded more than 22,000 questions and complaints from voters.

That is more than 10 times the number received by this point in 2012, although those presidential primary contests were considerably less pitched than the current ones.

Georgia has seen a litany of changes in — and challenges to — voting procedures since the Shelby County decision. A federal lawsuit accuses that state of illegally purging its voter rolls; in a recent two-year period, the 372,000 voters scrubbed from the rolls exceeded the number of new voters who were added. The chief elections official, Secretary of State Brian P. Kemp, has called the suit frivolous.

Mr. Kemp, a Republican who has crusaded against what he called the threat of voter fraud, has investigated voter-registration drives by Asian-American and predominantly black groups. A 2014 criminal inquiry into a group that had registered 85,000 new voters, many of them minorities, found problems with only 25 of the registrants, and no charges were filed.

Several counties have been sued over redistricting plans that dilute minority voting influence.

But perhaps none of the battles is more striking than the one in Hancock County, about 100 miles southeast of Atlanta, where three in four of the roughly 10,000 residents are black. The racial divide here is deep and prolonged; the white mayor of the county seat, Sparta, made headlines in 1970 after responding to black citizens’ school-desegregation protests by equipping the town’s six-member police force with submachine guns.

By the 1990s, the Justice Department had invoked its preclearance authority to block measures that it said would weaken minority representation on the Sparta City Council, but political control of the county was frequently split. By last year, black politicians ran Sparta, a white majority controlled the Hancock County commission, and a furious contest was underway between black and white slates to control the next Sparta administration.

The five-member Hancock County Board of Elections and Registration was controlled by three white members — the chairwoman, appointed by a local judge, and two members appointed by the Hancock County Republican Committee — one of whom, curiously, is a Democrat. According to documents filed in a federal lawsuit in nearby Macon, the board began taking steps last August that seemed destined to tilt the playing field to the white slate’s advantage.

The board first proposed to close all but one of the county’s 10 polling places, a move the N.A.A.C.P. and other minority advocates argued would disenfranchise rural blacks who could not travel long distances to vote. Board members eventually chose to eliminate just one predominantly black precinct. But around the same time, they began to winnow the county’s roll of registered voters, ordering an aide to compare the registrants’ stated addresses with those on their driver’s licenses to spot voters who had moved after registering to vote.

By October, a month before the city election, the board and a private citizen who appears to have worked with its white members had challenged the legality of 187 registered voters in Sparta. The board removed 53 of them, virtually all African-Americans — roughly one of every 20 voters. As a “courtesy,” court papers state, county sheriff’s deputies served summonses on the targeted voters, commanding them to defend themselves at election board meetings.

Some did, and were restored to the rolls. Others reacted differently to a police officer’s knock on their door.

“A lot of voters are actually calling to say they no longer wish to be on the list, so now we have people coming off the list who no longer want to vote,” Tiffany Medlock, the elections supervisor for the Hancock County elections board, told a Macon television reporter in late September. “It’ll probably affect the City of Sparta’s election in a major way.”

Mr. Warren, an African-American who is Sparta’s elections registrar, bought a hand-held video camera and began videotaping the county elections board’s meetings. His evidence helped lead the Georgia N.A.A.C.P., the Lawyers’ Committee and other advocacy groups to sue the county elections board, demanding that voters struck from the rolls be restored unless the county could prove they were ineligible.

A federal judge agreed. So far, 27 of Sparta’s 53 disenfranchised voters have been reinstated; the rest have yet to be located. Hancock County officials insist they did nothing wrong. In depositions this summer, the three white elections board members said their purge of Sparta’s voter rolls not only was correct, but that they would do it again.

But Julie Houk, an attorney handling the case for the Lawyers’ Committee, said the plaintiffs were determined to ensure that they do not. She said they plan to seek an injunction against future purges — and their lawsuit demands that the Justice Department reimpose preclearance reviews in the county until bias-free elections are a reality.

 

 

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Written by PNM Admin · Categorized: Georgia Democrats, Georgia Republicans, Georgia Voter Protection Hotline, Party News, Press Releases · Tagged: Democratic Party of Georgia, GAGOP, Georgia Democrats, Georgia Republicans, Voter Suppression, Voting Rights

Apr 05 2016

GA SoS Kemp Sets Sights on Quitman County…Again

Release:  Tuesday, April 5, 2016                                                                                          

 

GA Secretary of State Sets Sights on Quitman County…Again

 

 

Faulty state records could disqualify Democratic candidate in Georgia [Atlanta Journal-Constitution 4/5/16]

 

How White Georgia Republicans Are Derailing an African-American Candidate [New Republic 4/5/2016]

 

How White Georgia Republicans Are Derailing an African-American Candidate

Without the protections of the Voting Rights Act, local elections are a free-for-all.

BY SPENCER WOODMAN

April 5, 2016

Gerald Greene, a white Republican from Georgia, has represented the heavily rural, majority-black District 151 in the state House of Representatives for the past three decades. Because, according to Democrats, 151 is the state’s only minority-dominated district represented by a Republican, the Democratic party had been eyeing it as a promising pick-up for in the next election—a win, Democratic leaders say, that would signify a significant correction to years of the county’s black Democrats lacking legislative representation. In early March, the party finalized the candidacy of James Williams, a retired police officer from Albany, to run what Democratic strategists believed could be a winning challenge to Greene.

Yet on March 26, Williams went from campaigning against Greene to struggling to preserve his right to run in the election at all. That day, Williams says he received a call from the office of Brian Kemp, Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State, informing him that Greene had challenged his residency—and thus his eligibility to run in the district. Greene’s petition against Williams’s candidacy had found a receptive audience among the state’s top Republicans, who decided that, on closer inspection, Williams did not in fact reside in District 151. Suddenly, the majority-black district appeared to have no Democratic candidate residing within its lines, and the Williams campaign against Greene entered a realm of deep uncertainty.

“It was astonishing that I was being challenged after having voted in District 151 for approximately 18 years,” Williams told me. “I never thought something like this could happen in Georgia.”

This development has infuriated state Democrats, who have previously accused Kemp of deploying tactics to suppress the state’s Democratic-leaning minority vote. Democrats contend that, on March 7, using Kemp’s own residency data, the party qualified Williams to run in district 151. Yet sometime around March 18th, the party alleges, the boundary lines of District 151 quietly changed in Kemp’s database, edging Williams just outside of the district. Kemp’s office today essentially confirmed this account. An emailed statement from Georgia Secretary of State spokeswoman Candice Broce said that during redistricting “Dougherty County elections officials incorrectly designated Mr. Williams as living in House District 151.” Williams, the statement noted, currently lives in House District 154. “When alerted to their error, county officials corrected their mistake.”

Not surprisingly, Georgia Democrats see this as something other than an innocent mistake. “In a district that is majority African-American and that overwhelmingly voted for President Obama in the last two elections, any voter should be highly suspect of what has occurred,” said Georgia House Whip Carolyn Hugley in an emailed statement. “The district lines changed when a white Republican incumbent was challenged by a highly-qualified black Democratic candidate.”

Greene rejects accusations of voter suppression and emphasizes that he has long had minority support. “I’m not even going to comment on that,” Greene said when I asked about accusations that his residency challenge might suppress the black vote. “I’ve represented a minority district for 33 years.”

The controversy over District 151 comes as the country prepares for its first presidential election since the Supreme Court’s 2013 dismantling of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which required areas with histories of election discrimination to gain federal approval for all changes to election law. Alterations to state legislative lines would have fallen under the Act’s “preclearance” requirement. “Even small district shifts for a jurisdiction covered under the pre-clearance provision would have had to be pre-cleared before they could lawfully go into effect,” Myrna Pérez Director of the Voting Rights and Elections Project at the Brennan Center, said in an email.

Since 2013, legislatures in many of the nine, mostly Southern states that had been covered under the Act have enacted new restrictions on voting.This includes high-profile voter ID laws in Texas and Alabama that advocates say will negatively impact hundreds of thousands of residents. In the months following the Supreme Court decision, cities and counties around Georgia moved to close polling places—in some cases dramatic scale-back proposals that would leave only a single voting location left—and the cities of Augustaand Macon took steps to move their elections from November to July, which the Department of Justice had previously blocked. (Augusta’s black voter turnout tends to be proportionally lower during the summer months.)

Opponents of new voting restrictions can only challenge new rules after they take effect, a far harder task than the previous model of simply swatting down unimplemented proposals. Ahead of this year’s election, voting rights advocates have been engaged in a whack-a-mole struggle to address the myriad controversial state, county, and municipal changes to election rules.

For the past ten days, Democratic leaders in Georgia have scrambled to convince Georgia officials to allow Williams to continue his candidacy. Yet their appeals have made little headway. Democrats say that on Friday they heard from the state’s attorney general that Kemp’s office would neither allow Williams to challenge Greene nor reopen qualifying to give Democrats an opportunity to find someone else.

Democrats contend that whatever the state’s rationale for disqualifying Williams, it was Kemp’s data that had placed him in the district for years, his data that allowed him to initially qualify to run, and his data caused the party to place resources behind Williams’s candidacy. Williams’s run, they say, represents a setback for Democrats that Republicans both created and from which they will benefit. “There has to be some point at which district lines are fixed so that you can conduct elections,” said Michael Jablonski, the General Counsel of the Georgia Democratic Party. “Anytime anyone checked the records, it said that Mr. Williams was in 151, but after march 14th, that got changed. Everyone on his street was all of a sudden in district 154.”

Greene told me that the residency challenge stemmed from rumors that Williams did not live in the district. Greene says he knows nothing about previous records that might show Williams residing in 151. When I asked Greene whether he had spoken to Willams before qualifying him, Greene responded: “I don’t know him. I don’t know anything about him.”

On April 13, Williams and Greene will drive three hours north from Albany to Atlanta, to attend a hearing on his residency with the Office of State Administrative Hearings, which handles such electoral challenges. Williams says that despite the turmoil surrounding his candidacy he has continued to campaign. He says that faltering medical services in the heavily rural parts of his district represent one of the animating forces behind his campaign, and that he would use a seat in the statehouse to push for extending Obama’s expansion of Medicaid to Georgia, which has been blocked by state Republicans.

“I’m going to keep working hard and campaigning,” Williams said. “I want to serve the people of this district.”

Spencer Woodman is a freelance writer based in New York.

 

 

Written by PNM Admin · Categorized: Georgia Democrats, Georgia Republicans, Georgia Voter Protection Hotline, Press Releases · Tagged: Brian Kemp, House District 151, Secretary of State, Voter Suppression

Oct 09 2015

DPG Statement on Jeb Bush’s Voting Rights Act Comments

Release:  Friday, October 9, 2015   

                                                                                     

 

Democratic Party of Georgia Statement on Jeb Bush’s Voting Rights Act Comments

 

 

Atlanta, GA – Today, Democratic Party of Georgia Chair DuBose Porter issued the following statement in response to Jeb Bush’s comments on ballot access in Georgia.

 

“Next time, Jeb Bush should brush up on the state of voter access in Georgia before he opens his mouth. Coming from a governor whose state purged thousands of eligible voters, Jeb Bush is the last person anybody should be taking advice from on voting rights.

 

“Here are the facts in Georgia: A combination of Republican malfeasance and ineptitude in the legislature and the Secretary of State’s office continue to jeopardize ballot access for Georgia’s voters. Under Secretary of State Brian Kemp, we’ve seen our elections system basically drown in dysfunction. Republicans wasted taxpayer money and resources on a fruitless three year witch-hunt of the Quitman 12—accomplishing nothing more than the harassment of people of color. They found nothing.

 

“It seems that every week, we hear of another county pushing for the consolidation of precincts, adversely impacting the elderly, people of color, and those struggling to make ends meet.

 

“Recently, one of Kemp’s senior elections officials illegally purged thousands and thousands of Georgians from the voter rolls.
“And let’s not forget that—in response to a historic move to hold Sunday voting—Sen. Fran Millar, John Kasich’s man in Georgia, called expanded access to voting a ‘loophole’ and made reprehensible remarks about the Georgians who would benefit from expanded early voting opportunities.

 

“This is the first presidential election cycle we’ve had without preclearance, and the need for the strengthening of the Voting Rights Act is greater than ever. Thankfully Georgia Democrats are at the forefront of the fight to restore the VRA. But instead of expanding ballot access and making it easier to vote, Brian Kemp seems to prefer palling around with Republican presidential candidates and making a name for himself with the SEC primary. To have Jeb Bush make such dismissive remarks about Georgians’ right to vote is severely misguided and downright foolish.

 

“Georgia Democrats will continue to fight against the GOP’s voter suppression tactics, and fight even harder to ensure every eligible citizen is able to register, every registered voter is able to vote, and every vote is accurately counted.”

 

 

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Background

 

TIME – Exclusive: Jeb Bush Explains Why He Opposes Voting Rights Act Provision

 

“They want to reauthorize the Article 5 portion of this, and it’s time to move on,” Bush said. “Look, in—I think Georgia is the example that people use, African-American turn-out is higher than it is amongst white voters. There’s early voting, there’s all sorts of access. Percentage of vote is higher.”

“There is a point to say that whatever was done to create that environment, we should hail it as a success, and assume that states have the capability to do what’s right,” Bush added.

…Bush said he was unfamiliar with the ongoing controversy in Alabama, in which the state is closing driver’s license centers in many poor and minority communities due to budget cuts. The state’s voter identification law requires that voters posses identification to vote. Combined, critics argue, it is an effort to depress minority turnout in the state. Bush said he thought the current law allowed officials enough authority to investigate the claims.

“I don’t know the case of Alabama,” Bush told TIME. “Typically when you close DMVs it’s because of budget considerations. I can’t comment on that. But the existing law allows for some ability to inquire about that and look into it.”

 

Think Progress [9-9-14]

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported on Tuesday that Georgia state Senator Fran Millar (R) penned an angry response to DeKalb County’s announcement that early voting will be available on Sunday, October 26, and that an early-voting location will be opened at The Gallery at South DeKalb Mall. Millar represents part of the county and is Senior Deputy Whip for the Georgia Senate Republicans.

Millar wrote:

Now we are to have Sunday voting at South DeKalb Mall just prior to the election. Per Jim Galloway of the AJC, this location is dominated by African American shoppers and it is near several large African American mega churches such as New Birth Missionary Baptist.

…UPDATE 

On his Facebook page Tuesday, Millar stood by his comments, writing: “I would prefer more educated voters than a greater increase in the number of voters.

 

Huffington Post [6-25-15] – Florida Voter Purge Fiasco May Complicate Jeb Bush’s Appeal To Minorities

 

As the 2016 campaign heats up, an episode from his tenure as Florida governor reveals why Bush’s image as a “uniter, not a divider,” as his older brother used to put it, may not stand up. The state’s deeply flawed purge of felons from its voting rolls in advance of the 2000 presidential election remains a scar that still has not healed for many in the state.

…Since Florida did not track its voters by Social Security number, the company was instructed to engage in a subjective process that attempted to match felon names and dates of birth with voter records, allowing for “near matches” that were close, but not exact.

After Jeb Bush took office in 1999, this process continued. In the months leading up to the 2000 presidential election, local election supervisors began receiving lists from state officials of people DBT had identified as convicted felons and thus needed to be eliminated from the voting rolls.

It became immediately clear that the effort was generating a slew of false positives. Voters in good standing, who happened to share names with convicted felons, but had never been in trouble with the law, were being taken off the voting rolls.

 

 

11 Alive [4-3-15]

 

Kemp said Friday that the resignation was due to 7,690 voters being moved from inactive to cancelled status within 90 days of an election. The change, which occurred in February 2014 under Ford’s supervision, happened six days after more than 312,000 Georgia voters were changed from inactive to cancelled during a standard update process required by law.

 

 

Written by PNM Admin · Categorized: Georgia Democrats, Georgia Republicans, Press Releases · Tagged: Brian Kemp, DuBose Porter, Jeb Bush, Voter Suppression, VRA

Jul 19 2011

Rep. John Lewis Condemns Voter Suppression In the U.S.

Charges of voter suppression, especially through the use of draconian voter photo ID laws and other measures, have been rising in several states including Ohio, South Carolina, Florida, Wisconsin, Illinois.  Recently members of the U.S. House of Representatives to spoke out against what many view as GOP efforts to suppress the votes of Democratic voters, including minorities, rural voters, seniors and others groups.  This notion is not foreign to the people of Georgia who have struggled against the imposition of voter photo ID laws, unusual use of Social Security checks in the last election by the Georgia Secretary of State, and the convenient malfunctioning of voting machines in certain jurisdictions.  In Maryland prosecutors are investigating whether robo-calls were used to suppress the black vote in the 2010 election.  President Bill Clinton recently compared efforts to suppress the vote to Jim Crow in a speech given to young voters.

Rep. John Lewis made this statement on the House floor today to discuss these issues:

“Mr. Speaker, voting rights are under attack in America.   There is a deliberate and systematic attempt to prevent millions of elderly voters, young voters, students, minorities, and low-income voters from exercising their constitutional right to engage in the democratic process.  Voter ID laws are becoming all too common.  But make no mistake, Voter ID laws are a poll tax.  People who struggle to pay for basic necessities cannot afford a voter ID.  

The right to vote is precious and almost sacred, and one of the most important blessings of our democracy. Today we must be vigilant in protecting that blessing. We should be making it easy, simple, and convenient to vote. Before the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, many people were jailed, beaten, and some were even killed for trying to register and vote.   We must not step backward toward another dark time in our history.

The vote is the most powerful, non-violent tool we have in a democratic society.  We must fight back.   We must never go back.  We will not stand idly by, while millions of Americans are denied their right to participate in the democratic process.”   

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Written by PNM Admin · Categorized: Georgia Democrats · Tagged: Congressman John Lewis, Voter Suppression

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