Republicans may be about to steal an election in Georgia

[homersapien 11,453]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2018/10/11/republicans-may-be-about-to-steal-an-election-in-georgia/?utm_term=.db926367d116

It isn’t often you get to watch an election being stolen in real time, but that might be what is happening right now in Georgia.

When it comes to the nationwide, comprehensive, carefully planned Republican effort to suppress the votes of people who are likely to vote Democratic, particularly racial minorities, there is a menu of techniques Republicans employ — voter ID laws, voter purges, limiting early voting, closing polling places in heavily minority neighborhoods, and racial and partisan gerrymandering.

But what Brian Kemp is doing right now is truly unique.

Kemp, the Republican nominee for governor, is locked in an extremely tight race with Democrat Stacey Abrams. He also happens to be the secretary of state, the official in charge of all elections in Georgia. You might expect him to step down or recuse himself from overseeing his own election in the interest of fairness and public confidence that the fix is not in, but that’s not how Republicans do things. Kemp isn’t just overseeing the process, he’s apparently also doing everything he can to keep as many Democrats as possible from the polls in November.

Ben Nadler reports:

Ben Nadler reports:

Two main policies overseen by Kemp have drawn criticism and legal challenges: Georgia’s “exact match” registration verification process and the mass cancellation of inactive voter registrations.

According to records obtained from Kemp’s office through a public records request, [Marsha] Appling-Nunez’s application —like many of the 53,000 registrations on hold with Kemp’s office — was flagged because it ran afoul of the state’s “exact match” verification process.

Under the policy, information on voter applications must precisely match information on file with the Georgia Department of Driver Services or the Social Security Administration. Election officials can place non-matching applications on hold.

An application could be held because of an entry error or a dropped hyphen in a last name, for example.

Appling-Nunez says she never saw any notice from Kemp’s office indicating a problem with her application.

An analysis of the records obtained by The Associated Press reveals racial disparity in the process. Georgia’s population is approximately 32 percent black, according to the U.S. Census, but the list of voter registrations on hold with Kemp’s office is nearly 70 percent black.

 

 

Voter fraud my ass.  Republicans are trying to hijack our democracy.

[TitanTiger 20,511]

There needs to be an emergency injunction to stop that.  Putting aside for a second whether an "exact match" standard is reasonable, it's a massive conflict of interest for Kemp to authorize this sort of action in a race he's participating in.

[Brad_ATX 13,654]

41 minutes ago, TitanTiger said:

There needs to be an emergency injunction to stop that.  Putting aside for a second whether an "exact match" standard is reasonable, it's a massive conflict of interest for Kemp to authorize this sort of action in a race he's participating in.

EXACTLY THIS!