Georgia: Suit alleges Georgia blocked thousands of minority voters from rolls | Atlanta Journal Constitution

Less than a week before early voting starts in Georgia’s presidential election, a coalition of voting advocates filed suit Wednesday accusing Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp of disenfranchising thousands of residents by blocking their access to vote. Further, the lawsuit alleges that Georgia’s use of a strict matching process for voter registration has disproportionately affected minority voters across the state, meaning the voter registration applications of black, Latino and Asian Americans in Georgia are more likely than those of white applicants to be rejected. It is an accusation denied strongly by Kemp, who has traveled the state to tout the accessibility of Georgia’s elections.

Georgia: Voter registration process violates the law, lawsuit claims | WSB-TV

Georgia’s voter registration process violates the Voting Rights Act and has prevented tens of thousands of residents, mostly minorities, from registering to vote, according to a federal lawsuit filed Wednesday. Under a policy implemented in 2010, people aren’t added to the voter rolls if identifying information on their applications doesn’t exactly match information in databases maintained by the Georgia Department of Driver Services or the Social Security Administration, the lawsuit says. “What Georgia is doing is denying people the ability to make it onto the registration rolls at the outset, which is what’s so problematic about this matching program,” said Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. The organization said it filed the lawsuit Wednesday in Gainesville, in north Georgia, along with other legal organizations on behalf of a coalition of civil rights groups.

Georgia: Kennesaw State University warns of ‘unauthorized’ voter drives | Atlanta Journal Constitution

A sudden increase of clipboard-wielding operatives roaming Kennesaw State University’s campus could be intended to tamp down African-American balloting in November. Michael Sanseviro, Kennesaw State’s dean of students, sent a memo to students Tuesday morning, warning that “unauthorized individuals are walking around with clipboards claiming they are registering students to vote” in recent weeks. “Some of these unauthorized individuals,” the dean added, “are targeting particular student populations.” A student tipster tells us that the talk on campus is that shenanigans are afoot: The clipboard corps is targeting black students, pretending to register them so they can’t actually vote in November. A campus spokeswoman said she could only confirm that the would-be registrars were not permitted to be on campus, but the dean’s memo suggests this is a familiar problem.

Georgia: State That Exposed 6 Million Voters’ Private Data Says It Doesn’t Need Election Security Aid | ThinkProgress

Georgia’s aging, paperless voting machines have been called a “sitting duck” for hackers. Six million Georgia voters had reams of personal information exposed by a data breach in Republican Secretary of State Brian Kemp’s office earlier this year. Yet Kemp is refusing an offer from the Department of Homeland Security to help shore up the cyber-security of the state’s vulnerable voting machines. Instead, he accused the federal government of attempting to “subvert the Constitution to achieve the goal of federalizing elections under the guise of security.” He said the state is capable of handling its own election security, and opined a hack is “not probable at all.” Less than a year ago, Kemp’s office accidentally mailed out a dozen discs containing the private information of more than six million Georgia voters, including Social Security numbers, birth dates, and driver’s license numbers. At the time, Kemp told state lawmakers that while he is “no expert on data security,” he was confident that no information “made it out to the bad guys.” A year before that, tens of thousands of new voter registrations went missing from the state’s database — the vast majority of them belonging to low-income people of color.

Georgia: District mapping is diluting minority votes in this Georgia county, civil rights groups allege in lawsuit | Los Angeles Times

More than half a century after the passage of the federal Voting Rights Act, the most racially diverse county in the southeastern United States is depriving minority voters of the ability to elect local candidates of their choice, a coalition of civil rights groups has alleged in a federal lawsuit. Although minorities make up more than half the residents of Gwinnett County, Ga., northeast of Atlanta, no black, Latino or Asian American candidate has ever won a seat on the Board of Commissioners or Board of Education or in any other county office, the lawsuit says. The voting strength of minorities has been diluted by county district maps that have been drawn in violation of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, said Kristen Clarke, president of the Lawyers’ Committee, which represents the plaintiffs, including the Georgia National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People and the Georgia Assn. of Latino Elected Officials.

Georgia: Lawsuit: Gwinnett County political districts thwart minority voting rights | Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Voting rights advocates filed a federal lawsuit against Gwinnett County Monday, seeking to overturn county commission and school board districts they say have been drawn to thwart minority voters. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Atlanta, says minorities in Georgia’s second-largest county have been prevented from electing candidates of their choice, depriving them of a full say on issues ranging from immigration enforcement to school discipline. Though blacks, Latinos and Asians account for more than half of Gwinnett’s population, no minority has ever been elected to the county commission or the school board, according to the lawsuit. The lawsuit against the county and the school board seeks new districts favorable to minorities, as well as the possible elimination of the at-large county commission chairman’s job. An attorney for the plaintiffs said they had not ruled out seeking the changes in advance of this November’s county commission and school board elections, though in the past judges have been reluctant to order such changes so close to an election.

Georgia: Augusta getting 100 used voting machines from Colorado county | The Augusta Chronicle

Colorado’s switch to voting by mail is Augusta’s gain as Adams County, Colo., donates 100 surplus Diebold TSX voting machines to Richmond County Board of Elections. Elections Executive Director Lynn Bailey said a former Columbus, Ga., elections staffer who transferred to Colorado discovered 700 unwanted units there, available to anyone willing to pay shipping and license transfer fees. The machines “were the exact same system we used in Georgia,” Bailey said. “The only change we’ll have to make is we’ll have to update them to Georgia’s software.”

Georgia: Project Vote sues Georgia over voter registration records | Atlanta Journal Constitution

Georgia is being sued for the second time this year over its handling of voter records, this time by a group seeking more information from Secretary of State Brian Kemp about how the state decides to reject applicants trying to register to vote. Project Vote, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit active on voting and election administration policy, said in federal court filings this week that it has sought public records since May 2014 detailing Georgia’s process for reviewing voter registration applications and the subsequent reasons why applications may be rejected.

Georgia: Voting glitch was found in February, but no one told Fulton County | Atlanta Journal Constitution

Fulton County officials got caught by surprise when a data glitch caused some voters to cast the wrong ballot in Tuesday’s primary. Turns out, Georgia officials and state Democrats knew of the problem since February but no one told the county until Election Day. According to emails shared with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, officials with the Democratic Party of Georgia emailed the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office on Feb. 17 after noticing voter maps for House District 59 and House District 60 — seats held by two Democrats on the south end of Atlanta that stretch into East Point — were coded incorrectly, putting some voters in the wrong district. That means some voters may have received the wrong ballots and voted in the wrong race. A state staffer at the time replied in an attempt to confirm which county the districts were in. No changes were made, and no one contacted Fulton County. Georgia Democrats again reached out to the state about the problem last week after noticing it had not been corrected. But state officials did not say anything to Fulton officials until Tuesday afternoon, after voting was well underway.

Georgia: Secretary of State Brian Kemp responds to Justice Department interest | Albany Herald

Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp has responded to Democratic Party of Georgia claims that his office had “attracted the interest” of the federal Justice Department with a barb aimed at department. “The Department of Justice is like a yo-yo. Now they’re against something that they previously approved,” Kemp said Thursday in response to a request from The Albany Herald to comment on the Democratic Party’s statement. Kemp’s office drew the interest of Justice when that federal agency was asked to look into alleged violations of the National Voter Registration and Help America Vote acts by the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office. The charges centered on what the state Democratic Party claims is a purging of legitimate voters from Georgia’s voter rolls.

Georgia: Justice Department wants suit alleging Georgia illegally purges voters | Atlanta Journal Constitution

The U.S. Justice Department has asked a federal judge to deny a request to dismiss a lawsuit accusing Georgia of illegally bumping voters off the state’s rolls ahead of the 2016 presidential election. In a court filing, U.S. Attorney John Horn and members of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division indicated concerns with the state’s policy toward kicking voters off the rolls due to inactivity. The filing came in response to a request by Georgia officials to dismiss the suit after it was filed in February.

Georgia: Secretary of State ends 90-day “black-out” period for voter registration | Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The Georgia Secretary of State’s Office for years did not process voter forms submitted in the 90 days after a registration deadline, a practice meant to ensure that ineligible voters did not cast a ballot in an election. No more. The office is ending the practice immediately, saying the 90-day black-out period is no longer needed. The policy began in an era when voters registered only on paper, and was a way to prevent accidental voting by anyone who missed the deadline. But in an age of electronic record-keeping, the office says its current online system will prevent accidental voting from happening.

Georgia: Faulty state records could disqualify Democratic candidate | Atlanta Journal Constitution

James Williams qualified weeks ago as the only challenger to a Republican incumbent state lawmaker in South Georgia, one of a host of Democrats trying to tilt the balance at the state Legislature in this statewide election year. But now the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office — which keeps the official records used by political parties to qualify candidates — says its records were wrong about which district Williams lives in, likely disqualifying him from the race. The mix-up apparently happened four years ago when the state last re-drew district lines in a statewide process known as redistricting, including around House District 151 which includes part of Dougherty County as well as all of Terrell, Calhoun, Early, Randolph, Webster, Stewart, Quitman and Clay counties.

Georgia: Lawsuit accuses Secretary of State of illegally removing voters from rolls | Atlanta Journal Constitution

A federal lawsuit has accused Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp of illegally bumping Georgia voters off the state’s rolls ahead of the 2016 presidential election. Kemp’s office has denied the claim. The suit filed by the Georgia NAACP and government watchdog group Common Cause said the state is violating the National Voter Registration Act because of its longtime practice of sending “confirmation of address” notices to voters who haven’t cast a ballot in three years — and removing them from active status if they eventually do not respond. “People have a right to vote and they also have a constitutional right not to vote,” said attorney Emmet J. Bondurant, who is representing the groups. Federal law, he said, does not allow state officials to demand confirmation of address if they have no reason to believe a voter has moved other than that they have not cast a ballot.

Georgia: County rejects call for ballots in Spanish; sets up possible court battle | Fox News Latino

Despite pleas from two Latino rights groups, a Georgia county has rejected a request to provide Spanish-language ballots for the upcoming November elections. Officials in Gwinnett County voted 4-1 against the motion and defended the move by saying they do not have enough information to determine whether the county should provide bilingual ballots and voting materials. The two groups who filed the request – the Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials (GALEO) and the New York-based LatinoJustice – cited a provision of the federal Voting Rights Act that requires local governments to make Spanish-language ballots available to people from Puerto Rico who have difficulty reading English. This law was designed to help Puerto Ricans – who are American citizens – who move to mainland of the U.S.

Georgia: Fractious Fayette voting fight comes to an end | Atlanta Journal Constitution

A fractious political chapter in Fayette County came to an exhaustive end late Thursday night. County commissioners followed on the heels of the school board’s decision earlier this week to accept a settlement to end a 2011 lawsuit with the NAACP and a group of black residents who said the county’s at-large voting system kept blacks from getting elected to top county posts. County leaders fought hard during the last four and a half years to preserve the nearly 200-year-old at-large system but in the end grudgingly gave into a plan that calls for creating four districts and one at-large seat. It is a compromise from the map the county uses now which has five districts. The agreement, hammered out during two months of court-ordered mediation, must now get the blessing of the Georgia General Assembly. The county has until Jan. 25 to notify the Georgia General Assembly redraw the map created in the settlement.

Georgia: Fayette voting rights battle could be nearing an end | Atlanta Journal Constitution

A nearly five-year-old legal fight that has caused political and racial rifts in Fayette County may be coming to an end. The county school board voted unanimously Tuesday night to settle its part in a legal dispute with the NAACP and a group of black residents over how county government leaders are elected. The school board agreed to settle and adopt a new district map that calls for four voting districts and one at-large district, an obvious compromise toward the county’s ongoing push to bring back at-large voting. The county currently has five election districts. “This compromise settlement is in the best interest of the school system and the public,” the school board said in a prepared statement. “It allows for the continuation of some at-large seats, and eliminates the school district’s potential exposure to payment of over $1 million of attorney’s fees to the plaintiffs’ lawyers if the case were litigated further, which would have led to more appeals.”

Georgia: Democrats call for redistricting reform | Atlanta Journal Constitution

Three Democratic lawmakers are pushing to create an independent commission to redraw political lines in the future. Sen. Elena Parent (D – Atlanta), Rep. Pat Gardner (D – Atlanta) and Rep. Mary Margaret Oliver (D – Decatur) said the legislation would be a fairer way to redraw current legislative and congressional district lines in coming years. “It is time to give the citizens the ability to choose their representatives instead of the representatives choosing their voters,” said Gardner, who is sponsoring both resolutions.

Georgia: Culture of expediency also to blame in voter data breach | Atlanta Journal Constitution

The Georgia Secretary of State’s office, which acknowledged last month it inadvertently released personal information on every registered voter in the state, has blamed a single employee for the breach. But records show the problem was deeper than the Secretary of State’s office has acknowledged, revealing a business culture that ignored written policies for the sake of expediency, according to a review by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Secretary of State Brian Kemp, who declined to answer the AJC’s questions, blamed the release of Social Security numbers, birth dates and drivers’ license numbers on Gary Cooley, a low-level computer programmer. Kemp quickly fired Cooley, saying he failed to follow data-handling procedures and covered up his mistake for weeks.

Georgia: Brian Kemp releases Georgia data breach report | Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A long-awaited state report detailing how Georgia gave out more than 6 million voters’ Social Security numbers and other private data put the blame squarely on a employee fired for the breach last month. That employee, longtime state programmer Gary Cooley, flouted office protocol and policy within Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp’s office, according to the internal report about the data breach released Monday by the office and the state Department of Human Resources. The breach, it said, “was due to Mr. Cooley working outside of and circumventing established policies and procedures,” the report concluded. It called for more training, clearer policies and more active management of sensitive data.

Georgia: Data breach: State to offer voters ID theft monitoring | Atlanta Journal Constitution

Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp announced plans Thursday to offer 6.2 million registered voters a year of free credit and identity theft monitoring services. The announcement came more than two weeks after a massive data breach at the agency exposed those voters’ personal information, including Social Security numbers and birth dates. An agency spokesman said the move is expected to cost $1.2 million, paid by the agency through reserve funds. Kemp said he has contracted with Austin, Texas-based CSID for services that will be available within 10 to 14 business days. Additionally, he said all Georgia voters in the breach whose identity is compromised will be eligible for identity theft restoration services if their identity is compromised over the next year.

Georgia: Improper release of voter data prompts outside audit of state agency | Atlanta Journal Constitution



Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp plans to hire top auditing agency Ernst & Young to review his technology department in the wake of a data breach that exposed private information of more than 6 million voters. In a statement sent out after 6 p.m. Friday, Kemp also acknowledged a “similar but more limited” incident occurred in October 2012. According to emails obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution through an open records request about that incident, 12 voter registration lists containing sensitive personal data were sent out to people in 15 counties. But Kemp’s statement said “all of the information was recovered at the time.” News of the most recent incident became widely known Wednesday, when the AJC wrote about a class-action lawsuit alleging a massive data breach in the Secretary of State’s Office.

Georgia: Lawmakers want proof voter information has been secured after data breach | WSB

State lawmakers say they want more answers about the massive data breach involving millions of Georgia residents. Specifically: What steps organizations that mistakenly got our information took to secure it? From the beginning, the secretary of state has said the data on six million voters is secure. But now lawmakers want proof. … Kemps’ office told Channel 2’s Lori Geary they’re going back to the outlets that received the information to get written assurances no copies of the files exist. That’s not sitting well with Kemp’s critics. “All the pieces of ID theft are in that file. Your name, your birthdate, your Social Security number,” said state Rep. Scott Holcomb.

Georgia: Secretary of state fires employee after releasing info of more than 6 million voters | Associated Press

Georgia’s secretary of state said Thursday that he takes “full responsibility” for more than 6 million voters’ personal information being released to media and political parties and has fired an employee who he said is at fault. Secretary of State Brian Kemp said in a statement that as of Thursday morning, all 12 discs containing sensitive information had been retrieved or destroyed. “My staff has verified with the media outlets and political parties that received these discs that they have not copied or otherwise disseminated confidential voter data to outside sources,” he said. “I am confident that our voters’ personal information has not been compromised.”

Georgia: 6 Million Georgians’ Private Information Exposed in Voter Record Breach | Government Technology

Data security experts say the security lapse that potentially exposed the Social Security numbers and other personal information of more than 6 million Georgia voters could cause significant damage to consumers if they were to fall into the wrong hands. The information, including dates of birth and driver’s license numbers, is far more valuable to criminals than the bank card information that has been stolen in several recent high-profile cyberattacks against retailers such as Target and Atlanta-based Home Depot. Personal identity information can be used over and over and fetch high prices among criminals, while bank cards aren’t as valuable because they can be quickly canceled after a theft. “When you get a Social Security number and a date of birth, you’ve got everything you need to do tremendous damage to these consumers,” said Stephen Coggeshall, the chief analytics and science officer for data security firms LifeLock and ID Analytics.

Georgia: Lawsuit accuses Georgia of massive data breach | Atlanta Journal Constitution

Two Georgia women have filed a class action lawsuit alleging a massive data breach by Secretary of State Brian Kemp involving the Social Security numbers and other private information of more than six million voters statewide. The suit, filed Tuesday in Fulton County Superior Court, alleges Kemp’s office released the information including personal identifying information to the media, political parties and other paying subscribers who legally buy voter information from the state. In response, Kemp’s office blamed a “clerical error” and said Wednesday afternoon that they did not consider it to be a breach of its system. It said 12 organizations, including statewide political parties, news media organizations and Georgia GunOwner Magazine, received the file.

Georgia: NAACP Sues Hancock County For Purging African-American Voters | WABE

About 50 voters were permanently removed from Hancock County’s registration list in recent months, according court filings. Most were African-American, and the Georgia NAACP is now suing the county Board of Elections for what it says are racially biased voter purges. Hancock County is about 100 miles southeast of Atlanta. At issue is how the Board of Elections conducted a series of voter challenge hearings. Julie Houk, an attorney with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, represents the plaintiffs. She said since August, at least 201 voter registrations were challenged, according to the lawsuit.

Georgia: Puerto Ricans May Be Key For Bilingual Ballots In Georgia | WABE

As it stands now, all Georgians will cast their 2016 votes for president on English-language ballots. While the population of Hispanic voters is growing, it’s not grown enough for Georgia counties to join the 248 counties in 25 states that by law must offer bilingual voting material. But some advocates for Latino and Hispanic voting rights are working on a way around that. To get a language other than English on a ballot, more than 5 percent of voting age citizens in a county must primarily speak that specific language. In Georgia, that hasn’t happened. But the Voting Rights Act makes an exception when it comes to one particular community: Puerto Ricans.

Georgia: Suspended election official griped about faulty gear | WXIA

The DeKalb County election official placed on administrative leave complained about a faulty piece of equipment turned in from Tuesday’s election, according to elections director Maxine Daniels. Daniels said she suspended Leonard Piazza following a conflict he’d had with a subordinate. She declined to say if the conflict with the subordinate was related to the faulty equipment. Friday, DeKalb county officials certified the LaVista Hills cityhood vote now under investigation by the state. 11Alive news first reported the investigation into the election Wednesday. The state is investigating complaints of fraud.

Georgia: DeKalb County’s LaVista Hills election investigated for tampering | Atlanta Journal Constitution

Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp and the GBI opened an investigation Thursday into alleged voting irregularities – including a stray voting machine memory card – in the referendum that narrowly defeated the proposed city of LaVista Hills. A DeKalb election supervisor alleged that he found an unsecured memory card Wednesday that contained results from the Briarlake Elementary precinct, according to Channel 2 Action News. It’s unknown whether the votes on the memory card were counted in the precinct’s totals, where voters supported LaVista Hills 378-313.