A breathtaking scam: Inside Georgiaâs newest voter suppression tactic | Opinion
Republicans in Georgia have been champions at pioneering new ways to disenfranchise Democratic voters. Their latest scam is breathtaking.
First, the background.
When Georgiaâs Republican Governor Brian Kemp was Secretary of State â the stateâs top elections official â and running against Stacey Abrams for Governor in 2018, Abramsâ organization had registered 53,000 people (70% African American) to vote. Kemp put those registrations on hold so they couldnât vote in the 2018 election, which he won by 54,723 votes.
But that was just the beginning for Kemp. By the year prior to the 2018 election heâd purged a total of 1.4 million voters from the rolls, claiming he was just removing people whoâd died or moved. On a single night in July 2017 he removed half a million voters, about 8% of all registered Georgia voters, an act The Atlanta Journal-Constitution said âmay represent the largest mass disenfranchisement in US history.â
Investigative reporter Greg Palast hired the company Amazon uses to verify addresses and ran the names and addresses of those 534,000 people Kemp purged that July day through their system: 334,000 of them, most Black, had neither died nor moved. But theyâd sure lost their right to vote.
Then Kemp shut down 8 percent of all the polling places in Georgia just before the election, the majority â recommended as a âcost saving moveâ by a white consultant Kemp had hired â in Black neighbourhoods. Did I mention that he âwonâ that election by only 54,723 votes?
In 2020, when Stacey Abrams again challenged Kemp for the governorship, Kempâs Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (pronounced âRaff-ens-purgerâ) purged another 309,000 voters from the rolls; Palast hired the company again and found that 198,351 of them had neither died nor moved.
Itâs worth noting that if Brian Kemp wanted to take away a gun from any Georgia resident, Republicans on the Supreme Court have ruled that heâd have to go to court and prove his case; to purge voters from the rolls and take away their votes, though, Republicans on the Supreme Court have also ruled that Kemp doesnât even need to notify those voters.
This year, Kemp signed a new law allowing any citizen to present a list of voters they believe must be purged from the rolls; one person, Marjorie Taylor Greene ally and Republican activist Pam Reardon, submitted a list of 32,000 voters, and the Chairman of the Ft. Benning area GOP, Alton Russell, challenged over 4,000 voters. A total of 149,000 voters were challenged by a handful of white Republican activists.
These tricks have helped keep Republicans in charge of Georgia politics, a state that would almost certainly be blue if every citizen were allowed to easily vote.
But there was some blowback to Kempâs and Raffenspergerâs âmass purge by vote vigilantesâ strategy, so now comes Kempâs latest trick.
This week Georgia rolled out a new website where people can let the state know theyâve moved (or their relative has died) and cancel their voter registration online. Itâs super easy; you just plug in your information and, poof, your voter registration vanishes.
This would seem to be a solution in search of a problem. For example, over the past 50 years Iâve lived in Michigan, New Hampshire, Germany, Georgia, Vermont, Oregon, Washington DC, and then Oregon again: I never once let a state know Iâd moved. Nobody does .
Instead, states track death records and the expiration of driversâ licenses to determine whoâs died and moved so they can then cancel registrations appropriately. My being registered to vote in both, say, Washington DC and Oregon when I only live in Oregon, is not a problem for DC if I donât try to vote there. And nobody ever tries to vote twice just because theyâve moved; itâs a form of âvoter fraudâ that just doesnât happen in any meaningful numbers.
But âkeeping the voter rolls cleanâ â as if it were an urgent imperative making the wait for driversâ licenses to expire just too dangerous â is the new excuse for Kempâs Georgia website. Nobodyâs believing the GOPâs âmass voter fraudâ schtick anymore, so theyâre reverting to this rational-sounding new way of getting Democrats removed from the voting rolls.
The problem with the new âcancel my registrationâ site is that bad actors, if they know a personâs name, address, DOB, and either Social Security or driversâ license number, can simply go in and cancel other people they donât want voting.
The âsafety barrierâ is that Republican activists who want to delete voter registrations in areas they know are heavily Democratic might be deterred from trying to do that with this new site, because they donât have all that data on every Georgia voter.
Until this week.
For an hour on Monday, the entire Georgia voter database â including names, addresses, dates of birth, and Social Security and driversâ license numbers â was publicly posted on that very site. Oops, Kemp said! Anybody could download it and share it with others, including Republican activists who might want to keep on purging Democratic voters.
As the Executive Director of the Georgia Democratic Party said, âThis portal is ripe for abuse by right-wing activists who are already submitting mass voter challenges meant to disenfranchise Georgians.â
When the Associated Press â which downloaded and printed out the list â showed it to the Georgia State Senate Minority Leader Gloria Butler, she was horrified, pointing out, âIf someone knows my birthdate, you could get in and pull up my information and change my registration.â
This is nuts.
Vice President Kamala Harris has promised that if sheâs elected president and gets a Democratic House and Senate, the first piece of legislation sheâll sign will be the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which will put an end to Kempâs games in Georgia and similar Republican stunts across the nation.
If you think it should be harder to take away your vote than your gun, double-check your voter registration (especially if you live in a Red state) and show up this fall!