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ATLANTA – While advance polls and mail-in ballots are underway before the Nov. 6 election, Democrats and voting groups in Georgia are organizing protests for the protection of huge voters, including guards polling and telephone support lines, to allow citizens to access the vote.
"We are now communicating with an average of over 700 voters a day and the volume of calls has increased dramatically," Georgia Democratic Party spokesman Seth Bringman said of the voter protection hotline.
The issue is Republican Secretary of State Brian Kemp's bid for Democrat Stacey Abrams, who would be the first black governor in US history if elected.
The advocacy groups say that Kemp, the state's election official, can not impartially oversee his own elections and that his office has always been repressive. Kemp, who declined calls for resignation or disqualification, says he is abiding by the law and has facilitated the vote in Georgia.
Renowned Republicans have called the controversy "fabricated" and said it was supposed to attract Democratic support before the elections. Kemp also went back to Abrams claiming that she was pleading for the "illegal ones to vote" for her, which Abrams denies.
The struggle in many respects reflects a national debate on the balance between access to the ballot box and the security of the ballot box. And likewise, it has spread in the partisan arena.
Republicans in Georgia, including Kemp, lobbied for tough voter identity laws, citizenship checks, and aggressive voter registration in the name of protecting elections from fraud and the vote of non-voters. -citizens.
Among them, Georgian Democrats, including Abrams in chief, have said that these policies are deliberately cumbersome and make voting more difficult for legal citizens, especially minority voters who tend to be Democrats.
Kemp and Abrams, a former state official, have been fighting for the right to vote and access for years in the deep South State.
Tension grew after an Associated Press report in early October said that more than 53,000 candidates, including nearly 70 percent from black candidates, were waiting for Kemp's office before the elections.
Many applications have been reported for not having passed the "exact match" verification process of the state, which requires that the credentials on the voter registration applications match the information held by the Georgia Department. of Driver Services or the Social Security Administration.
Kemp's office claims that eligible voters on the "pending" list can still vote if they bring an appropriate identity document that substantially matches the registration information.
Critics argue that county officials are not always trained to make appropriate decisions and that the system can be particularly difficult to navigate for newly naturalized citizens, as other state databases are not automatically updated. day.
The law is the subject of a lawsuit filed by human rights groups in federal courts.
On Friday, a judge issued an injunction enjoining the state to change its procedure to give people considered non-citizens more opportunities to prove their citizenship at the polls. It decided that Georgia should immediately allow polling station officials to allow marked voters who presented proof of citizenship to vote normally, whereas only deputy registrars could do so before.
The ACLU and other groups filed a lawsuit following the announcement that a metropolitan county of Atlanta was rejecting high-rate postal ballots, with signatures not matching those listed in folder.
Last week, a federal judge issued an injunction directing the Kemp office to instruct county officials to stop rejecting ballots due to mismatched signatures without first giving voters to solve the problem.
During another incident, county officials ordered about 40 older black people to get off a bus to drive them to a senior center, who felt that they considered it trip as being wrongly political.
Kemp's office said the problems involved county officials, not his office, and his office was investigating. They say that county officials are holding elections.
Kemp and the Republicans firmly rejected the claim that, through malice or mismanagement, his office had implemented policies and laws that were confusing and made it more difficult for citizens to vote.
The Kemp campaign called the incidents "fake" and blamed Abrams.
"The confusion of voters in our state rests on the shoulders of Stacey Abrams – who is obviously too extreme and dishonest for Georgia," said Kemp spokesman Ryan Mahoney.
In a recent campaign statement, Kemp also said minority participation was on the rise and participation rates had been surpassed during his tenure as secretary of state.
"Seven million Georgians are now on our electoral lists, one million more than when I took office in 2010," Kemp said.
Kemp's office said that voters had several ways to handle their questions and complaints: a dedicated call center, an online portal set up by Kemp, and a messaging system to deal with the issues. And in many cases, county election officials can help solve problems on the spot, Kemp's office said.
But a number of voting and ethics oversight groups are concerned that, given the diversity of issues faced by voters, these services are not enough.
"It's like a domino effect," said Sara Henderson, executive director of Common Cause Georgia, about voting problems in Georgia. "We expect a lot of problems in the polling stations as there has been a complete lack of voter education."
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For full AP coverage of mid-term elections in the United States: http://apne.ws/APPolitics
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