Judge Rules Against Georgia Election Law, Calling It To Severe Burden For Voters: NPR

Georgia gubernatorial candidates Democrat Stacey Abrams and Republican Brian Kemp during a debate last month.

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Georgia gubernatorial candidates Democrat Stacey Abrams and Republican Brian Kemp during a debate last month.

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The Georgia governor's race is already drawing people to the polls in record numbers, and a federal judge has made it easier.

U.S. District Judge Eleanor Ross ruled out on Friday the state must relax restrictions that could prevent more than 3,000 people, a state of the art in the midst of elections.

The "exact match" law flags vote registrations that have discrepancies with other official identification documents used by the state. Mismatches can occur under the law for such reasons as missing hyphens, accent marks and middle initials. Those who are flagged can still vote if they settle the discrepancy by providing proof of identity.

Those who are flagged as potential noncitizens must be approved by a deputy registrar before being allowed to vote. Civil rights groups filed suit, arguing that the law is one of a discriminatory vote suppression effort that disenfranchises predominantly minority voters. Brian Kemp, the Republican candidate for governor who also oversees Georgia's Secretary of State, says the law is vital for election integrity.

In her ruling, Ross said the requirements were "serious concerns for the Court on the differential treatment of a group of individuals who are predominantly …

Ross ruled that Georgia must immediately start allowing poll managers to be clear. Ross has also been instructed to publish a new version of the law.

In a statement to NPR, Candice Broce, the spokeswoman for Secretary of State Kemp's office, said Ross's decision is "a change to the current system."

Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, one of the groups that brought the lawsuit, called the decision "scathing."

"Prior to the court's issuance of relief, these citizens, many of them provided proof of their citizenship, they would have had to proceed to the Deputy Registrar in the county to provide proof of their citizenship," said Clarke. "Tracking this one has been a fatal requirement that would have been impossible for many to meet."

A report by the Associated Press said that under the "exact match" law, Kemp had more than 50,000 votes cast registrations by mostly black voters. The AP reported that through a Kemp calls process "vote roll maintenance," his office has "canceled over 1.4 million votes registrations since 2012" and that "nearly 670,000 registrations were canceled in 2017 alone."

Kemp's race against Democrat Stacey Abrams, who is coming to the nation's first black female governor. The race has attracted national attention, even drawing on Friday by Oprah Winfrey, who spoke at an Abrams rally about the state of the vote, and implored people to show up at the polls.

"For anybody here who has an ancestor who is not in your country, you are dishonoring your family," Winfrey said. "You are disrespecting and disregarding their legacy, their suffering and their dreams when you do not vote."

President Trump is scheduled to appear in the state on Sunday at a rally for Kemp.

In a gubernatorial debate last month, Kemp said allegations he had been "totally untrue."

"I've staked out the integrity of my entire career as a secretary of state," said Kemp said.

Abrams has based on a large part of its strategy around turning out minority voters. On Saturday in an interview with MSNBC, Abrams said, "The fundamental belief that it is for my campaign and this state, is it's an organizing opportunity.It is not just about my election.It is about building the capacity for voters who are often overlooked by our politics to have their voices heard. "

On Friday, in a separate case, the American Civil Liberties Union announced the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11^th Circuit had denied Kemp's request to be closed to the ballots over mismatching signatures and handwriting.

The state attorney general's office has not responded to a request from NPR for comment on the ruling.

The debate over voting in the midterm elections extends to multiple states. In North Dakota the Republican-controlled government has implemented a controversial new law requiring residents to show identification with a current street address. But as Ruben Kimmelman reported for NPR, "Many Residents of Native American Reserves – Who Do They Have Post Office Box Numbers, and Those Do not Qualify."

In Iowa, the Republican Secretary of State is voting in ID voting, and in Dodge City, Kansas, a federal judge has denied a request to open a new polling site far from the city center that advocates would say Latino vote turnout at risk. The location of the new polling site would have been more difficult.

Voting Rights Act, which seeks to make voting easier for millions of minority voters across the country.

In a 2013 ruling, Shelby County c. HolderThe Supreme Court struck down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, which stipulated that states like Georgia, with a history of racial discrimination, had to be approved by the federal government.

With which oversight abolished, multiple states have moved to implement new voting measures, such as the "exact match" law, which Georgia legislators enacted last year.