Democratic Party of Georgia

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FLASHBACK: Brian Kemp Twice Failed to Do His Job and Put the Voting Rights of Military Service Members at Risk

ATLANTA — Brian Kemp claims to support Georgia’s veterans and military service members, but while serving as Secretary of State he was twice called out by a federal court for failing to protect the voting rights of military service members abroad under the federal Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA).

Specifically, Kemp failed his duty as Secretary of State to schedule Georgia elections so that military service members overseas would have enough time to vote absentee in the event of a runoff election.

BACKGROUND:

June 2012: The federal government warned that Georgia was on track to violate the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA), which ensured that U.S soldiers serving overseas would have enough time to vote by absentee in federal elections. The government called on Brian Kemp to do his job and comply with the law.

April 2013: Kemp not only failed to fix the election system, he previously said making changes would “place unnecessary stresses on the elections administration process.”

July 2013: The court ruled in favor of the U.S. Government and said the proposal offered by Georgia did not fully comply with federal law. The court specifically noted that “the Secretary of State… has not presented a proposal that satisfies UOCAVA advance ballot transmittal requirements.” (Order terminating the civil action, U.S. v. The State of Georgia and Brian P. Kemp, Secretary of State, 7/11/13)

July 2013: Officials for Georgia, including Brian Kemp, filed a Motion stating their request to “leave the status quo in place…” until after a final resolution on the case which would occur after the election. (Defendants’ Motion to Stay Permanent Injunction Pending Appeal, U.S. v. The State of Georgia and Brian P. Kemp, Secretary of State, 7/31/13).

The Motion was denied, with the court noting Georgia had not “met their heavy burden” and the court declined to “sanction another election cycle that does not comply with UOCAVA.”(Order Denying the Defendants’ Motion to Stay Permanent Injunction Pending Appeal, U.S. v. The State of Georgia and Brian P. Kemp, Secretary of State, 10/16/13)

February 2015: The case was closed after Georgia finally made the necessary changes to satisfy the requirements of the UOCAVA.

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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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Update on Georgia Voter Purge

Friends,

As the summer winds down, we see continuing attacks on our voting rights.  Whether due to actions by the Justice Department, the Commission on Voting Integrity, our own Secretary of State, or our counties, we must remain vigilant to protect these rights. So, with this message we reach out to you to find out if you have been contacted in connection with the on-going purge of inactive voters or the moving of active voters to inactive status. We would appreciate it if you would fill out the form through the link below if you have been contacted for either of these purposes. In addition, if you have friends who have received communications of this type, please pass on this form to them so we can gather this information from as many sources as possible. This information is important for us to have as we monitor the Secretary of State.

Voter Roll Form

If you received communication that you would be placed on the inactive list that means they need to hear from you or with the passage of enough time you will be taken off the voter role, i.e., you will be “purged.” You are still authorized to vote if you are on the inactive voter list. So long as you either vote in the next federal election or contact the superintendent of elections in your county you will be returned to active voter status.  You should have received a form to complete. Please do that.  If you do not still have the form, reach out to us through the link we have above and we will get you the appropriate information to contact your county superintendent of elections so you will be placed back into active status.

If you received a notification that you were removed from the voting list, you must re-register. Please use this link to register again or go into a Driver’s License Bureau or other location for voter registration. Unfortunately, once taken off the voting rolls this is the only effective way of being sure you are registered. If you re-register online you will be required to show photo identification for registration when you vote. If you register in person, be prepared with those materials. Photo identification requirements can be found here.

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide. The efforts to suppress our vote are real.  We must fight back.

 

Sincerely,

 

Pinney Allen

Chair, Voter Protection Committee

 

 

Seemingly Oblivious to His Own Record, GA Secretary of State Brian Kemp Pulls a Trump

Release:  Wednesday, October 26, 2016                                                                

Atlanta, GA – Donald Trump isn’t the only Republican unraveling on social media. Following Trump’s bizarre Twitter meltdown over what he calls a “rigged election” and his dangerous refusal to say he will accept the election results, Georgia’s Chief apparently felt the need to get in on the fear-mongering action by issuing his own baseless tweets railing against individuals who are trying to expand voting access. And yesterday, he took to Facebook to double down on his contempt for those who have shed a light on his appalling record.

“In the past month alone, Georgia voters have had to deal with Kemp’s dysfunctional website that harmed their ability to register to vote, and his stubborn refusal to extend registration deadlines after a massive natural disaster. Sadly this is par for the course. Georgians need a Secretary of State who is able to fulfill the basic functions of his job – not someone who defensively takes to social media to point his finger at others every time he fails to protect the integrity of our voting system. But most of all, Georgia needs a full reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act so that all citizens, regardless of the competence of our chief elections officer, have the ability to exercise their most basic constitutional right by casting a vote.” – Michael Smith, Communications Director.

Under Brian Kemp’s watch, barrier after barrier has been erected to make it harder for Georgians to register and cast their vote. His record speaks for itself:

Brian Kemp has been Georgia’s Secretary of State since January 2010. Among the office’s wide-ranging responsibilities, the Secretary of State is charged with conducting efficient and secure elections, the registration of corporations, and the regulation of securities and professional license holders. The office also oversees the Georgia Archives. [Georgia Secretary of State’s Website, 2/15/2013]

ILLEGAL VOTER PURGES AND “STRICT MATCHING” 

Brian Kemp Sued For Blocking Thousands Of Minority Voters From Rolls
In September of 2016, The Georgia NAACP, the Georgia Coalition for the Peoples’ Agenda and the legal nonprofit Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta filed a federal lawsuit against Brian Kemp for disenfranchising thousands of minorities ahead of the presidential election, alleging that the state’s “strict matching” requirement for information on registration forms blocked them from voter rolls. According to the suit, the state denied 34,874 registration applications from 2013 to 2016 due to mismatched information. Of those, black applicants were eight times more likely to fail the state’s verification process than white applicants, and Latinos and Asian-Americans were six times more likely to fail, according to the suit. [The Atlanta Journal Constitution 9/14/2016]

Brian Kemp’s Spokeswoman Accuses Civil Rights Plaintiffs of Trying to Disrupt Voter Registration 
Brian Kemp’s spokeswoman stated that the September 2016 lawsuit challenging the practice of “strict matching” was “an effort by liberal groups to disrupt voter registration just weeks before an important election.” The lawsuit was filed by a coalition of civil and voting rights groups. [The Daily Report, 9/26/16]

After Being Sued, Brian Kemp Agrees to Restore Tens of Thousands of Blocked Voters To Rolls
Tens of thousands of voters whose registrations were canceled will be restored to the voter rolls before the November election after Brian Kemp agreed to suspend a longtime practice of canceling registrations that the state NAACP, Asian Americans Advancing Justice, Georgia Coalition for the Peoples’ Agenda, and others had filed suit to stop on September 14th. Kemp concession came the same day that a judge in Ohio ruled the practice of purging voters from the rolls who had not voted in four years was a violation of federal voting laws. Kemp faces a similar pending lawsuit in Georgia. [The Daily Report, 9/26/16]

Brian Kemp’s Office Sued By NAACP and Common Cause For Illegal Purge of Thousands from Georgia’s Voters Rolls.
The National Voter Registration Act (“NVRA”) specifically prohibits states from initiating voter registration purges against individuals for failure to vote; however, Georgia initiates such purging programs precisely after identifying individuals who have failed to vote for the previous three years. Due to the state’s practice, as of June 2015, over 800,000 Georgians have been placed on an inactive list – due to voting inactivity – and await being removed permanently unless they either respond to a notice or appear to vote within the following two election cycles. [Common Cause, 11/24/2015]

United States Department of Justice Filed “Statement of Interest” Regarding Brian Kemp’s Voter Purge.
On May 4 2016, The United State Department of Justice filed a “Statement of Interest” with the Federal Court in a pending lawsuit probing Kemp’s purges of voters from Georgia’s voter rolls. The Department of Justice argued that Kemp’s attempt to dismiss the lawsuit should be denied and pointed to specific violations of the National Voter Registration Act and the Help America Vote Act. The NVRA governs voter registration and the maintenance of voter lists used in federal elections. HAVA establishes minimum standards to be used in federal elections. [Statement of Interest of the United States, 5/4/2016]

Brian Kemp’s Election Director Resigned After Kemp’s Office Illegally Purged Nearly 8,000 Voters From Rolls.
The Georgia Secretary of State’s election director resigned after illegally purging nearly 8,000 voters in the run-up to 2014’s May 20 primaries. [The Atlanta Journal Constitution, 4/3/2015]

INTIMIDATING ORGANIZERS REGISTERING AND MOBILIZING VOTERS OF COLOR WITH PROSECUTION 

Brian Kemp’s Office Launched Investigation into Twelve Organizers in Quitman County.
After an investigation by the Secretary of State’s office, state agents arrested a dozen African American voting organizers, three of whom had been elected to the county school board. With the charges pending, Georgia’s governor, Nathan Deal, issued an executive order temporarily removing the three newly elected school members from their posts, and reinstating the county’s white-majority school board. Four years after the election in question, the state dropped all charges against the group. [The New Republic, 5/5/2015]

Quitman Resident Lula Smart Faced 32 Felony Counts For Mailing Absentee Ballots.
A Quitman resident named Lula Smart faced 32 felony counts that could have carried more than a hundred years in prison, largely for charges of carrying envelopes containing completed absentee ballots to the mailbox for voters. Four years later, after three trials, a jury in Quitman cleared Lula Smart on every count against her. [The New Republic, 5/5/2015]

Quitman Resident Debra Dennard Faced Two Felony Voter Fraud Charges For Assisting Blind Father With Absentee Ballot.
Quitman resident, Debra Dennard, faced two felony charges of voter fraud for helping her father fill out his absentee ballot. Her father, David Dennard, is missing both legs and is partially blind. Mr. Dennard says that with his daughter’s assistance he voted for just who he wanted to without any coercion or meddling. “All she did was help me—just as she helps me with almost everything… I knew who I wanted to vote for, and I signed the ballot myself.” [The New Republic, 5/5/2015]

Quitman Resident Bessie Hamilton Intimidated In to Signing Statement Against Lula Smart.
Bessie Hamilton testified that one of Kemp’s investigators came to the doctor’s office where she worked, took her into an unused break room, and intimidated her into signing a statement against [Lula] Smart. “I was scared,” she said on the stand. “This man came to my job with a gun, and on top of that, he told me I could have went to jail.” [The New Republic, 5/5/2015]

Quitman Resident Sandra Cody Removed From Her Job Due To Fraud Charges.
Quitman resident Sandra Cody was removed from her longtime Head Start teaching jobs because of the pending voting charges. “They said were not supposed to be around children,” Cody said, “because we have this on our record.” Although the charges were dropped weeks after their removal, bureaucratic red tape delayed their return to those jobs until February. Cody fell behind on her rent and utility bills because of the loss of work. [The New Republic, 5/5/2015]

Brian Kemp’s Office Targets the New Georgia Project.
In September of 2014 Brian Kemp announced an investigation against the New Georgia Project, an organization with the goal of registering 120,000 voters of color prior to the 2014 election. The Secretary of State confirmed only 50 potential “forgeries” among the tens of thousands the registration forms that the group had submitted, amounting to roughly 0.001 percent of the New Georgia Project’s submissions. [The New Republic, 5/5/2015]

“We have not detected from anything that [the group’s leaders] have said or done that it is a goal of the New Georgia Project to go out and commit voter registration fraud,” Kemp’s lead investigator said on September 17th, according to an opinion blog of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. [The New Republic, 5/5/2015]

Brian Kemp’s Office Fails To Add 40,000 Voters Of Color To Rolls in 2014.
In October of 2014, The New Georgia Project engaged in a legal battle with the Secretary of State to ascertain the whereabouts of 40,000 voter registration applications that were submitted prior to the registration deadline, but had yet to appear on the voter rolls. [NPR, 10/22/2014]

Brian Kemp’s Office Claimed 40,000 Missing Voter Registrations Did Not Exist.
After accusations that 40,000 voter registrations submitted by the New Georgia Project and other nonprofit organizations, did not appear on the rolls, Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp’s office claimed that the voter registrations did not exist. “The claim that there are over 40,000 unprocessed voter registration applications is absolutely false,” he said. “The counties have processed all the voter registration applications that they have received for the general election.” [NPR, 10/22/2014]

Brian Kemp’s Office Delays Adding Thousands Of Voters To The Rolls Until After Election Day.
Despite Claiming that no such voter registration forms existed, 18,000 of the voter registration forms submitted by The New Georgia Project by the registration deadline were added to the rolls three to nine months after Election Day 2014. [The Atlanta Journal Constitution, 2/11/2016]

While Kemp said that “the counties have processed all of the voter registration applications that they received for the general election,” new voters were not found on the voter rolls. Diamond Walton registered to vote with the New Georgia Project in August of 2014. She finally received a registration card in October. On Election Day, when she arrived at her polling place she was not on the rolls and was told to fill out a provisional ballot. Instead, Ms. Walton called a lawyer from the New Georgia Project who, after numerous calls to officials, found her name on a supplemental list. [The New York Times, 11/4/2016]

Newly Naturalized Citizen Voters Turned Away From Polls In 2012.
In the weeks prior to the 2012 General Election, Helen Ho, Executive Director of Asian American Legal Advocacy Center, discovered that newly naturalized citizens her organization had worked to register were not on the voter rolls. Early voting had begun and polling places were challenging and turning away new citizens seeking to vote for the first time. [The New Republic, 5/5/2015]

Asian American Legal Advocacy Center Denounces Brian Kemp’s Office For Failure To Add Newly Naturalized Citizen Voters To Rolls.
After the Secretary of State’s office failed to provide adequate answers regarding their failure to add new citizen voters to the rolls, AALAC issued an open letter on October 31 demanding that Georgia take immediate action to ensure the new citizens could vote. [The New Republic, 5/5/2015]

Brian Kemp’s Office Launches Criminal Investigation Against Asian American Legal Advocacy Center.
Two days after the Asian American Legal Advocacy Center issued an open letter denouncing Brian Kemp’s office for their failure to add newly naturalized citizen voters to the rolls in a timely manner, Brian Kemp’s office launched an investigation into their voter registration efforts. [The New Republic, 5/5/2015]

Kemp’s office asked that AALAC turn over certain records of its registration efforts, citing “potential legal concerns surrounding AALAC’s photocopying and public disclosure of voter registration applications.” The investigation targeted her group not for any voter fraud, per se, but for more technical issues, such as whether canvassers had people’s explicit, written consent to photocopy their registration forms before mailing the originals to the elections office. [The New Republic, 5/5/2015]

Brian Kemp’s Investigation In To AALAC Lasts Two And A Half Years, Finds No Violations.
Brian Kemp’s investigation of Asian American Legal Advocacy Center lasted two and a half years and ended with no finding of violations. [The New Republic, 5/5/2015]

PARTISAN ACTION AGAINST DEMOCRATS AND REPEATED MISHALNDING OF VOTER FILE DATA IMPACTS ELECTION RESULTS 

Data From Kemp’s Office Leads Residency Challenge Against African American Democratic Candidate for Georgia House District 151.
In March of 2016, James Williams qualified to run for office in House District 151, where he had been living and voting for several years. After the qualifying period had closed, elections officials re-categorized Williams’ street of residence as belonging to House District 154, resulting in a residency challenge. The Secretary of State has declined to re-open the qualifying period to allow another Democratic candidate to run, and has declined to let Williams run in 151. House District 151 is the only majority-minority House district in Georgia currently represented by a Republican. [The New Republic, 4/5/2016]

Republicans and Democrats Treated Differently During The Qualifying Process.
In House District 3, three of the four candidates running for the May 24 Primary were initially disqualified because the Georgia Republican Party failed to provide the elections office with the proper paperwork on time. However, Catoosa County Republican Party Chair Denise Burns said that candidates seeking the House District 3 seat can fill out paperwork to qualify again. An official from the state party informed her that the GOP Executive Committee voted to re-open the qualifying process. Two disqualified Republican candidates were allowed to appear on the May Primary Election ballot. [Times Free Press 4/14/2016] [SOS Website 9/15/16]

Data from Brian Kemp’s Office Leads To Incorrect Ballot Distribution in House Primary
During the 2016 Primary Election, data from Brian Kemp’s office led to at least 30 and potentially 60 voters in House Districts 59 and 60 to cast ballots in the wrong district. The top two vote getting candidates in HD 59 were forty votes apart. [Creative Loafing, 9/9/2016]

Brian Kemp Warns Republican Allies That Democrats Are Registering Minority Voters.
At a July 12th, 2014 event with Republicans in Gwinnett County, Georgia, Brian Kemp advocated that Republicans register voters, and also stated, “…Democrats are working hard, and all these stories about them, you know, registering all these minority voters that are out there and others that are sitting on the sidelines, if they can do that, they can win these elections in November.” [Think Progress 9/11/2014]

Brian Kemp’s Office Released the Personal Information, Including Social Security Number, of Registered Georgia Voters – 6 million Individuals.
The October 2015 voter file distributed to news organizations and other entities that purchase the information included private data such as voters’ social security numbers and driver license numbers. Third parties can legally buy the voter lists from the state, but the lists should only include a voter’s name, residential or mailing address, race, gender, registration date and date of last vote cast. Georgia’s data release was one of the larger disseminations of private data for a U.S. state. [The Atlanta Journal Constitution, 11/18/2015]

REDUCING ACCESS TO VOTING FOR COMMUNITIES OF COLOR

The Macon-Bibb Board of Registration and Elections Moved a Precinct from Memorial Gym to the Sheriff’s Office. In early 2016 The Macon-Bibb County Board of Elections decided to move the Memorial Gym polling place to a sheriff’s building near Second Street and Houston Avenue because of ongoing construction at the gym. That plan drew fire from various civil rights groups, including the Georgia State Conference of the NAACP, which alleged that the proposed location could alienate some minorities. [The Macon Telegraph, 4/21/2016]

Upson County Polling Closures Leads to Heavy Traffic on Election Day.
In March of 2016, polling places in Upson County experienced heavy traffic during Georgia’s presidential primary vote. “I’d never seen anything like it,” said Kay King, a member of the local board of elections who worked the polls that day. “It was just unreal.” Although King doesn’t believe the precinct consolidation was designed to discriminate against minority voters, she said she voted against the plan because it eliminated the sole polling site in her district, which she said has a high population of minority residents. “Some of those people don’t have transportation so they have a hard time getting back and forth to other precincts,” King said. “We lost that precinct, so now those people will have to travel a little further.” [VICE, 4/16/2016]

Georgia Is One of Only Three States to Check Citizenship on the Front End of Voter Registration.
Georgia is only one of three states to check citizenship on the front end of voter registration. In late January 2016, the Election Assistance Commission’s Executive Director Brian Newby, granted the requests of three states — Kansas, Georgia and Alabama — to include the proof-of-citizenship requirement for state elections as a state-specific add-on to the federal form, against prior policy. Before joining the commission, Mr. Newby was a county elections official in Kansas, where he was a close ally of Kris Kobach, one of the nation’s most ardent supporters of restrictive voting laws.  [New York Times, 4/10/2016]

State Board of Elections Encouraged Precinct Closures.
Sandi Fallin, Tift County Elections supervisor, spoke to Tift County commissioners during a workshop, telling them that the state’s Board of Elections has encouraged the local office to consolidate its precincts. [Tifton Gazette, 9/11/2015]

Tift County Plans to Consolidate Precincts from 12 to 1.
In September of 2015 the five-member, majority-conservative Tift County Board of Elections led by its supervisor– Republican Sandi Fallin — planned on consolidating all twelve current voting locations and directing approximately 20,000 registered voters to cast a ballot at Tifton’s UGA Conference Center. [The Examiner, 9/10/2015]

Macon- Bibb County Attempts To Eliminate 14 Polling Precincts.
In January 2015, the Macon-Bibb Board of Elections proposed a plan to reduce or consolidate the County’s 40 precincts down to 26, allegedly as a cost saving device.  Most of the proposed precinct reductions and consolidations in the original plan targeted majority Black precincts. Under that plan, some of the majority Black precincts had over 5000 and 6000 voters. By contrast, no majority white precincts had more than 5,000 voters and, in most cases, had thousands fewer voters than the proposed consolidated precincts in the majority Black communities. In response to organized opposition by community organizations, the BOE reduced the number of precinct closures, but the majority of these closures disproportionately impact Black precincts. The County has failed to explain how it will staff and equip the larger consolidated Black precincts and we will be monitoring the impact of these closures on voters when they attempt to cast ballots in the 2016 elections. [The Lawyers Committee, 5/7/2016] [Macon Telegraph, 5/28/2015]

Upson County Reduces Number of Polling Precincts from 9 to 4 As Cost Cutting Measure.
In July 2015, Upson County’s Board of Elections voted to reduce the number of precincts from nine to four as a cost cutting measure. [The Thomaston Times, 10/19/2015]

Hancock County Precinct Consolidations Create Travel Burdens for Black Rural Voters.
Hancock’s Board of Elections (BOE) planned to close all but one precinct located in downtown Sparta, despite the relatively high voter turnout in the County in 2008 and 2012. While cost-savings was given as a rationale, the BOE did not release data justifying this harsh plan. Precincts proposed for closure were 10.9-16.9 miles from the one remaining precinct, presenting a travel burden for voters living in the majority Black precincts in the mostly poor and rural areas of the County who don’t have access to regularly scheduled transportation. After organized opposition led by the Georgia State Conference of the NAACP, Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda and the Lawyers’ Committee, the BOE decided to close only one of the ten precincts in the district. [The Lawyers Committee, 5/7/2016]

Hancock County Voter Purges Targets Black Voters.
On November 3, 2015, the Georgia State Conference of the NAACP, the Georgia Coalition for the Peoples’ Agenda and five black Hancock County voters represented by the Lawyers’ Committee, along with local pro bono co-counsel, filed a voting rights lawsuit against the Hancock County election officials that challenges the purging of black voters from the Hancock County voter registration lists in advance of the November 2015 City of Sparta municipal election. Plaintiffs contend that the actions were intended to suppress the African American vote. According to the suit, almost 17 percent of eligible Sparta voters were challenged and nearly all of the 53 voters purged were Black voters.  Since the lawsuit was filed, following a U.S. District Court order, Hancock officials have reinstated 15 of the 53 voters. [The Lawyers Committee, 5/7/2016]

Police Commanded Black Voters in Hancock County To Prove Validity of Their Registration
As a “courtesy,” court papers state, county sheriff’s deputies served summonses on African American voters targeted for removal from the rolls, commanding them to defend themselves at election board meetings. Some did, and were restored to the rolls.

“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.” [The New York Times 7/31/2016]

SUPER TUESDAY 2016 PRECINCT IRREGULARITIES

Fulton County Precinct Changes Occurred Without Proper Voter Notification.
In March of 2016, voter complaints flooded into Fulton County and the state when residents found out they hadn’t been notified that their voting locations had changed. The county blamed the postal service for not delivering mailers before the March 1 election. Now, the postal service and the secretary of state’s office are investigating. It’s not the first time there have been problems related to voting in Fulton County. [The Atlanta Journal Constitution, 4/16/2016] and [The Atlanta Journal Constitution, 4/11/2016] 

Faulty Voting Machines in Fulton County Delay and Deter Voters on Super Tuesday.
Roughly 100 voters in northeast Atlanta’s Virginia-Highland neighborhood learned that the electronic voting machines were not working the morning of Super Tuesday. According to the precinct manager, the machines were programmed for the wrong precinct. Voters were given the choice of voting on paper or coming back later. Voters learned they would have to wait 30 minutes to cast their ballot on paper. About an hour-and-a-half into the voting, an IT professional from the Fulton County Elections office came and re-programmed the machines. The precinct manager said only 46 of the early morning voters chose to cast paper ballots. Every else chose to try to return before the polls close at 7 p.m. [WMTV, 3/1/16]

2016 GENERAL ELECTION ISSUES 

Glitch in Online System Prevents Georgians From Registering To Vote Online
Less than two weeks prior to the voter registration deadline, a failure of the online registration system resulted in error messages, prompting the Secretary of State to urge voters who tried to register online over a period of approximately five days to check their status. [WTVC, 10/5/2016]

After Lawsuit, Judge Orders Brian Kemp to Extend Voter Registration Deadline After a failed request to extend the voter registration deadline in the wake of Hurricane Matthew, The Georgia Coalition for People’s Agenda, Georgia State Conference of the NAACP and the nonprofit Third Sector corporation successfully sued the Secretary of State’s office to extend the voter registration deadline in Chatham County. Over 40 percent of Chatham County residents are black or Latino.
[CBS 46, 10/12/2016] [Lawyers’ Committee Press Release 10/13/2016]

Brian Kemp Approves of Donald Trump’s Call For Poll Watchers
2016 Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump warned supporters that the election may be “rigged” in favor of his opponent, Democrat Hillary Clinton, and urged supporters to monitor the polls, stating “I hope you people can sort of not just vote on the eighth [but] go around and look and watch other polling places and make sure that it’s 100 percent fine.” Brian Kemp said a surge of Trump-inspired poll watchers would be welcome, so long as they undergo training after the state receives their names. [The Washington Post 8/13/16]

Brian Kemp’s Office Rejects Federal Assistance To Protect Against Hackers
Less than a year after Brain Kemp’s office released the personal data of an unprecedented 6 million Georgia voters, Kemp rejected an offer from the federal government to protect Georgia election systems from the threat of hacking. [The Atlanta Journal Constitution 8/29/16] [The Atlanta Journal Constitution, 11/18/2015].

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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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Chairman DuBose Porter: The Right to Be Represented

Last week, the United States Supreme Court heard oral argument in Evenwel v. Abbott. Democratic Party of Georgia Chair DuBose Porter gave his take on the case that threatens the democratic principle of “one person, one vote.”

 

DuBose Porter: The right to be represented

Savannah Morning News // DuBose Porter

 

Fifty years ago, Georgia’s own John Lewis stood on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., with young activists demanding a voice at the ballot box. Congress passed and President Johnson signed into law the Voting Rights Act of 1965 —a landmark piece of legislation that extended the franchise to countless Americans whose participation in our democracy was denied. While we have made much progress since 1965, recently we’ve witnessed a coordinated attack from the right to limit who has access to our democracy.

Republicans around the nation are gunning for more restrictions on voters — because when large groups of targeted populations are disenfranchised, they have a better chance of winning. This ‘change the rules of the game to ensure a win’ effort is demonstrated through restrictive voter ID laws, curtailing early voting, and other egregious attempts to limit access to the necessary documents needed to register to vote.

But now we face another fundamental challenge to our democracy. On Dec. 8, the United States Supreme Court will hear oral argument in Evenwel v. Abbott. On its face, it’s just a redistricting case. But a closer look reveals just how insidious this right-wing attack on democracy truly is.

The plaintiff, Sue Evenwel, is an executive member of the Texas Republican Party. If she wins in court and has her way, states would be forced to leave out entire swaths of their populations when drawing legislative districts simply because they are not voters. Children, legal permanent residents, and others currently unable to vote would not be counted and would be invisible for purposes of representation. In other words, districts would be drawn on the number of eligible voters — not on the actual population of an area.

Instead of representing all of the people, our elected officials would effectively ignore millions of people living under their jurisdiction simply because they can’t vote. These are children who go to our schools. They’re hardworking women and men who pay the taxes that pave our roads and build our infrastructure. They’re the DREAMers who will one day become homeowners, business owners, and employers.

To ignore them when creating legislative districts is to disenfranchise the very people we’ve fought so hard to include in our democracy over the past five decades. Young people, African Americans, Hispanics, and Asian Americans all disproportionately suffer if Sue Evenwel gets her way.

In Georgia, an estimated 2,490,299 young people under 18 could be disenfranchised if Sue Evenwel has her way — including 49 percent who are young women; 833,690 of African Americans; and 314,438 of Hispanics.

Republican lawmakers in Georgia have already mounted a concerted effort to restrict access to the ballots. This offensive move began few a years ago with new Georgia voter ID laws — some of the strictest in the nation. And it continues with Republicans pushing to hack away at early voting days and a Secretary of State who regularly purges our voter rolls.

And just last year, after several counties decided to expand early voting opportunities to a few Sundays in October, Republicans vowed to “eliminate this election law loophole.”

Ballot access is not a loophole, it’s a guaranteed right. As Americans, we are directed to protect this sacred right and no effort to restrict or intimidate its exercise should be tolerated.

This is a cause that all fair-minded Americans can rally behind. After all, the defendant in the case is Texas’ own Republican Governor, Greg Abbot who is advocating for districting by population.

In 2015, we must remain as vigilant as ever in the face of such egregious attacks on our democracy. We’ve come too far to silently sit back and let those with an extreme agenda erase our progress. Anything less would dishonor the legacy of heroes like John Lewis and the countless others that gave their all — in some cases their lives — to ensure that every American has a voice.

DuBose Porter of Dublin is chairman of the Democratic Party of Georgia.

DPG Chair Denounces Remarks Made By GA GOP State Senator on Sunday Voting

Release:  Tuesday, September 9, 2014

 

Democratic Party of Georgia Chair Denounces Remarks Made By Georgia Republican State Senator on Sunday Voting

 

 

Atlanta, GA – Days after DeKalb County CEO Lee May announced that DeKalb voters would—for the first time in state history—be allowed to cast their ballot on a Sunday, Georgia Republicans are announcing plans to suppress voter turnout.

 

Today, State Senator Fran Millar said of Sunday voting “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. Galloway also points out the Democratic Party thinks this is a wonderful idea – what a surprise… I have spoken with Representative Jacobs and we will try to eliminate this election law loophole in January.”

 

Later, Millar took to social media to say “…I would prefer more educated voters than a greater increase in the number of voters…”

 

Democratic Party of Georgia Chairman DuBose Porter issued the following statement in response to Millar’s remarks:

 

“What have Georgia Republicans come to when they are outwardly admitting to suppressing the African American vote? Further, his comments about ‘educated voters’ are reprehensible. I suppose Fran would prefer a return to literacy tests or the poll tax while he’s at it.

 

“Access to the polls is not a loophole—it’s a guaranteed right. And it’s Fran’s responsibility to make sure that the tens of thousands of voters in his district have every opportunity to make their voice heard. Anything less than that is reckless and frankly un-American.

 

“As Democrats, our mission is clear—to ensure every eligible voter can register, that every registered voter can vote, and that every vote is accurately counted. Even in the face of this brazen and discriminatory move by Republicans, we will continue to work toward the expansion of voting access. It is our civic responsibility.”

 

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BACKGROUND

 

AJC 9/9/2014 – GOP state senator says first Sunday vote in DeKalb will be the last

 

Think Progress 9/9/2014 – Georgia Senator Complains That Voting Is Too Convenient For Black People

 

 

 

Voting Access – A Tale of Two Parties

Release:  Tuesday, September 9, 2014

Atlanta, Georgia – Just days after DeKalb County announced that—in a historic first for Georgia—DeKalb voters will be allowed to cast their ballot on Sunday, Georgia Republicans are already announcing plans for new legislation to specifically suppress voter turnout.

AJC 9/6/2014 – DeKalb CEO Lee May – “This is a nonpartisan opportunity that we have before us.”

DPG Chair DuBose Porter says ““I think the rest of the 158 counties in Georgia ought to do it. Voting ought to be as convenient as possible.”

AJC 9/9/2014 – Georgia Republican Senator Fran Millar, responds:

“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. Galloway also points out the Democratic Party thinks this is a wonderful idea – what a surprise.

…Is it possible church buses will be used to transport people directly to the mall since the poll will open when the mall opens?

…I don’t think this is necessarily true and we are investigating if there is any way to stop this action.

…I have spoken with Representative Jacobs and we will try to eliminate this election law loophole in January.”

What Nathan Deal Thinks About Voting Rights

What Nathan Deal Thinks about Voting Rights

 

Today is the deadline to register to vote in the May 20 primary election.

 

Our position on voting rights is very clear: we have to ensure that every eligible voter can register, that every registered voter can vote, and that every vote is accurately counted.

 

That’s why we’re proud that Democratic candidate for Governor, Sen. Jason Carter, is a true voting rights advocate. As a lawyer, he did pro bono work on a legal challenge to a Republican-backed voter ID law. The service earned him the Stuart Eizenstat Young Lawyer Award from the Anti-Defamation League. As a Georgia Senator, he has fought for increased access to the ballot and against an overly partisan gerrymandering of our legislative and congressional districts.

 

Today, Sen. Jason Carter said, “The right to vote is the foundation of our democracy. Civil rights icons like Martin Luther King and John Lewis fought hard to make sure that every eligible voter could cast their ballot without impediment, and it’s up to us to defend and build upon that progress.”

 

Georgia Republicans have a drastically different take on voting rights. Since Gov. Nathan Deal took office, the GA GOP has led the charge to limit your rights, making the process more complicated and creating barriers like voter-ID laws that prevent too many Georgians from casting a ballot. Just this year, Republicans attempted to shorten early voting from twenty-one days to six days.

 

And what are Nathan Deal’s personal views on voting rights? Here’s what he said about discriminatory voter-ID laws:

 

Deal Grandmother Watch

 

“We got all the complaints of the ghetto grandmothers who didn’t have birth certificates and all that. We wrote some very liberal language as to how you can verify it. My mother was born in 1906 and she didn’t have a birth certificate. They didn’t give birth certificates back then. But we got her one, because you can do it under the proper procedures of your state.”

 

For many Georgia voters, obtaining the ID needed to cast their vote is difficult. In fact, more than 16 percent of voting-age Georgians live more than ten miles from a state-ID issuing office and have no access to a vehicle.

 

Sen. Carter and Georgia Democrats believe your right to vote is sacred and we will continue to seek out ways to expand ballot access to all those who are eligible to register and to vote.

 

If you, a friend, a family member, or a neighbor have yet to register to vote, you can do so here. If you are already registered, check your registration status here.