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The measures taken by the Georgian state to suspend the registration of 53,000 voters, mostly African-Americans, have attracted the attention of lawyers who wish to broaden the right to vote and those who are concerned about electoral fraud .
The battle is set in a tight race for the governorship between an African-American woman, Stacey Abrams, former Speaker of the House of Representatives, and a White, Brian Kemp, senior election official in the state.
The Georgian contest and others across the country were the subject of a referendum on President Donald Trump. Voters find in Kemp an ardent Trump supporterand to Abrams, a candidate seeking to "brings the blue waveIn Georgia, if Abrams wins, she will become the first black governor in the country.
The defenders accused Kemp of discriminatory voting practices related to the so-called law of "exact correspondence" of the state. Kemp denies the allegations.
What exactly is happening in Georgia? Can "waiting" candidates still have a voice in the 2018 state election? Here is what we know.
How does the Georgian law of "exact correspondence" work?
Under the 2017 Georgia Law, a voter registration application is complete if the information on this form matches exactly the records maintained by Georgia's Department of Driver Services or the Social Security Administration.
If there is no correspondence, it is placed on standby and the applicant is informed, by a letter from the departmental registration board, of the need to provide additional documents. It is then up to the applicant to provide sufficient evidence to verify his identity.
Potential voters have 26 months from the date of the initial application to resolve any issues with their application. If this is not the case, the application is rejected. A new application must be submitted in order to successfully register for the vote.
According to an analysis by the Associated Press, about 53,000 applications for voter registration are pending in Georgia – and the vast majority of them are African American.
Candidates who are waiting can still vote, provided that they can present an appropriate photo ID at their polling station.
Trial says policy is prone to errors
A complaint filed on 11 October by the Committee of Lawyers for Civil Rights under the law and its partners on behalf of Georgian organizations states that the practice of "perfect correspondence" is discriminatory, illegal and constitutes a "plan to suppress voters" ". They argue that Georgian law imposes on candidates a strict "exact match" whereas the matching protocol for election officials is "not a model of absolute precision and is subject to erroneous and inconsistent results that are often not the plaintiff's fault ".
According to the prosecution, the reasons for which there is no correspondence correspond to: the transposition of a letter or a number, the deletion or addition of a line of union or an apostrophe, accidental entry of an extra character or space and the use of a familiar name such as "Tom" of "Thomas".
The law of 2017 does not require that country registration offices conduct quality reviews to ensure that they do not make any mistakes of any kind. entrance, said the pursuit.
Prosecution: the federal audit process is not reliable
The court filing also highlighted issues with the verification process of the Social Security Administration. A June 2009 report by the Office of the Inspector-General of the Social Security Administration indicated that the limitations of the administration's audit system led to false results that were not matched.
States provide information to the Social Security Administration's Help Audit Vote Check Program when new electors do not present a valid driver's license during the registration process. The Social Security Administration verifies the correctness of the applicant's name, date of birth and the last four digits of the social security number submitted.
The Inspector General's report indicates that the Social Security Administration did not always provide specific information to States and that its program displayed "a rate of mismatch that was significantly higher than other verification programs used by the United States. States and employers ".
The law is a persistent election issue
The lawsuit brought by the Lawyers' Committee aims to put an end to the application of Georgian law and to change the status of pending claimants to around 53,000 applicants. The inaction of the court will affect not only the November elections, but also the presidential elections of 2020, said the group.
This is not the first time Kemp has been challenged by the "exact match" requirement.
Before the 2016 election, his office had suspended the practice and reached a related settlement in early 2017, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
However, in 2017, the Legislative Assembly of Georgia passed a bill codifying the policy. It was signed by the Republican government Nathan Deal. Supporters of the law say it can help prevent voter fraud.
Kemp says Abrams "created a" crisis ""
Kemp dismissed the complaints of Abrams and militant groups as groundless.
Abrams has "created a" crisis "to ignite its supporters and raise funds from the leftist radicals of the country," said Kemp m said.
This is because Georgians whose applications are pending can still vote, he said.
"Pending" candidates may vote if they provide the polling stations with an identity photo that "substantially" reflects the name on the registration form, said the American Civil Liberties. Union of Georgia. (Georgian law already requires photo ID to be able to vote in person.)
Georgians whose application for voter registration was pending for any citizenship issues must provide proof of citizenship to a deputy registrar.
The Kemp office has blamed racial disparities in the pending applications to Abrams and the New Georgia Project, which Abrams founded around 2013 to register minority voters. His office told the AP that solicitors were not adequately trained to ensure complete and legible forms. (Kemp's office investigated the New Georgia project to detect possible election fraud.)
The Secretary of State's office did not answer PolitiFact's questions.
New Georgia Project told PolitiFact that its staff was trained and that under current law, it had to submit all forms collected, even if it contained errors. "This means that if someone does not complete his form or properly indicate his birthday, we are legally bound to submit it, even if it is obvious that there is a mistake, "said Nse Ufot, executive director of New Georgia Project.
Abrams is "proud of the work" that she has done to register voters, said a spokeswoman.
The law "erodes confidence in our elections and the ability of eligible voters to vote – and that is precisely what Brian Kemp intends to do," said Abigail Collazo of the Abrams campaign.
Experts find flaws in comparison in Florida
Statistically, minority voters are more likely to have names with hyphens, suffixes, or other punctuation that may make it difficult to identify their names in databases, noted experts. This makes them more likely to get caught up in the "perfect match" law.
"An unrealistic rule of this type will falsely identify many legitimate registration forms, and the evidence indicates that minority residents are more likely to be reported than whites," Barry C said. Burden, professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Director of its Elections Research Center.
Even if all the people on a waiting list are finally allowed to vote, voters on this list, who are disproportionately Black and Hispanic, face additional barriers, said Charles Stewart III, Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Kenan Sahin at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Kemp's office said the Georgian law "mirrors" that applied in Florida. But what distinguishes Georgian law from that of other states is that the burden of repairing any discrepancy falls on the claimant, experts said.
In Florida, if a candidacy does not fit, election officials must try to reconcile differences, said Jonathan Brater, a lawyer with the Brennan Center for Justice Democracy Program at the NYU School of Law.
And Georgian law does not recognize that "matches like this are notoriously problematic," said Stewart.
The lawsuit against Kemp also indicates that Florida law does not cancel a claim if a discrepancy has not been reconciled after a given period. In Georgia, after 26 months, registration applications still with problems are rejected.
How could the electoral list of 53,000 "pending" affect the turnout?
Georgia has about 7 million registered voters. Polls indicate that Kemp has a narrow lead of 2 percentage points.
Although the "waiting" candidates can vote, it is likely that there will be some confusion on the day of the election on how to treat these voters, experts told us.
"Having a" pending status "registration complicates the voting process and could deter some voters from participating," said Burden. "Communicating properly to voters, whether they are formally affected or not, is essential to facilitate the voting process."
It is possible that a court will intervene in time to help the voters concerned, Burden said. But to be effective, we should act quickly to ensure that information is shared with voters.
Advance voting in Georgia is already under way.
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