Mother Jones -Tens of thousands of would-be voters in Georgia have had their voter registrations put on hold, threatening their ability to cast a ballot in November, due to a policy implemented by Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp, who is also the Republican candidate in next month’s election for governor. Of the 53,000 applications in limbo, 70 percent are from African Americans, according to an investigation by the Associated Press, even though Georgia is approximately 32 percent black.
Kemp’s office implemented an “exact match” policy, which requires information provided in a voter’s registration application to match up exactly with that person’s existing information in either the state’s Department of Driver Services database or the Social Security Administration’s records. A dropped hyphen in a last name or a middle initial instead of a middle name is enough to put an application on hold. The policy, which Kemp has carried out in different forms for years, has a history of disproportionately flagging and disenfranchising minority voters.
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