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Democrats Stacey Abrams and Republican Brian Kemp are vying to become Georgia's next governor. (John Friends / AP)
Philip Bump
A national correspondent is largely focused on the numbers behind the policy
The registration deadline for Georgian voters has elapsed this week and has been wrapped up, with the electorate being selected for the mid-term elections next month. A large number of non-federal races are on the ballot in the state, none more guarded than the race for governor. This race announces itself as a microcosm of the wider political divide at the national level, with a democrat who would become the first black woman to govern a state facing a white man who had kissed Donald Trump during the Republican presidential primary. . Colored woman vs. Trump's sidekick is 2018 in a nutshell.
This deadline to register to vote has not passed without controversy. The Associated Press reported Tuesday that the Georgian secretary of state held about 53,000 applications for registration because they were flagged by the state's "exact match" system. This system, introduced by the state legislature last year, imposes a stricter process of validating registrations as part of an effort to reduce illegal voting. It is important to remember that illegal or fraudulent voting is by no means an important problem in the United States.
What is the severity of the new rules? If a person whose family name is a hyphen, Jones-Smith, had to sign up to vote but excluded the hyphen, she could be diverted to that list. "pending" registration. This is a process that has had a disproportionate effect on the black, Hispanic and Asian voters of the state. Of the 53,000 candidates selected by the Secretary of State, 70% are for black voters.
The secretary of state, by the way, is Brian Kemp – the white Republican confronted by Stacey Abrams, the woman who would be the first black governor of the country.
What is the importance of these selected applications? The latest registration data from state voters show that there are just under 6.4 million active voters in Georgia. Without the 53,000 registrations in force, black voters make up about 30% of the total. If one adds these 53,000 votes to the list, the density of black voters will reach 30.5%, which corresponds to one additional registered voter out of 200 enrollees.
Kemp's office does not just adopt the "exact match" policy. It is also responsible for determining which entries are active and which are not. Since last October, the number of registrations among ethnic and racial groups has increased. But the rate of increase varied according to race and gender.
Monthly data from the Secretary of State's office show that the increase in the number of registered Hispanic voters has been greater than that of black or white voters. An important caveat: about 10% of all registrations involve people of unknown race or ethnicity. However, compared to October 2017, here is how the registration totals changed.
Notice this blue box, marking the change from July to August 2018 in black men. The registration data provided by the state for July 1 indicated that 782,840 black men were active voters. As of August 1st, this number fall at 780,059. Despite increases due to new registered voters, the state had transferred enough inactive registrations, so there were fewer identified black men registered at the end of the month than at the beginning.
This is the only group shown on the graph above where totals dropped between July and August.
July is also the month in which Kemp wins the Republican government's primary. (His victory was obvious about mid-way through the month After Trump's approval, the electorate changed in his favor.) However, you will notice in the first graph that similar killings took place in late summer 2017, the number of registered voters belonging to various groups having fallen.
His critics have noted these overlaps between Kemp's official role and the state and the disadvantages of an electorate supposed to favor his opponent. Georgia Public Broadcasting had an interesting interview with a former Georgian secretary of state, stressing that having an elected elected representative to manage the elections would necessarily raise issues of objectivity. The stakes of this struggle and the divisions of the political moment only served to reinforce this tension.
There is no evidence that Kemp deliberately places his thumb on the scale to his advantage. However, it is widely proven that the system that he manages himself gives a beneficial boost to Republican candidates like him. The system of "exact match" tends to disproportionately affect those who vote more heavily in democracy. The process of transferring voter status to voters similarly affects the poorest voters and black voters.
Kemp does not hesitate to adopt this system.
"This decision affirms that common sense measures, such as Georgia's electoral list retention laws, that prevent voter fraud, are appropriate and necessary to ensure safe, accessible and fair elections. ", he said after the approval by the Supreme Court of a similar voting process of slaughter.
Again, there is no evidence of significant or widespread fraud in the US elections. The fact that the laws on voter identification and measures such as "exact matching" helps Republicans by reducing the number of Democratic voters is an obvious reason why many Republicans subscribe to these laws.
According to the average RealClearPolitics polls, Kemp has a lead of about 1.4 points on Abrams. In a tight race, these 37,000 entries blocked by black voters could make the difference.
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