Ever since it was announced that Donald J. Trump was going to be the 45th President of these United States of America, Democrats have been looking to attach themselves to any kind of competition to gain some kind of payback for their defeat (See: Super Bowl LI). Although it didn’t result in an explicit victory, this past Tuesday’s special election for Georgia’s House seat in its Sixth District offered Democrats their first viable taste of victory and vengeance. Wednesday’s special election resulted in Democrat Jon Ossoff narrowly missing out on the 50 percent of the vote that he needed to win the contest outright, thus making a run-off between Ossoff and top GOP vote-getter Karen Handel necessary. The details of the run-off, scheduled for June 20, have already become the subject of controversy and, now, a lawsuit.
Yesterday, the DC-based Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law filed a lawsuit on behalf of five different civil rights groups–the Georgia NAACP among them–that claims that a certain Georgia state law that prohibits those who weren’t registered for this week’s special election from voting in June’s run-off is in violation of national voting laws.
The reportedly violated law that the complaint cites is the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, which explicitly states that states “can set a voter registration deadline for federal elections shorter than 30 days, and a number of States do so, but cannot set a longer deadline.” The complaint claims that Georgia’s “statutory scheme” effectively creates a deadline that exceeds the restriction of a 30-day registration deadline, which will mean that people who registered between March 21 and May 22 won’t be eligible to vote in June.
Full Article: State of Georgia Sued Over Alleged Voter Suppression.