Georgia: State Purged About 107,000 People From Voter Rolls: Report | WABE

Even by Georgia standards, the voter purge of late July 2017 was remarkable. In a single day, more than half a million people — 8 percent of Georgia’s registered voters — were cut from the voter rolls. Republican Secretary of State Brian Kemp, an avid supporter of President Donald Trump who has described himself as a “politically incorrect conservative,” oversaw the removals eight months after he’d declared himself a candidate for governor. The purge was noteworthy for another reason: For an estimated 107,000 of those people, their removal from the voter rolls was triggered not because they moved or died or went to prison, but rather because they had decided not to vote in prior elections, according to an APM Reports analysis. Many of those previously registered voters may not even realize they’ve been dropped from the rolls. If they show up at the polls on Nov. 6 to vote in the heated Georgia governor’s race, they won’t be allowed to cast a ballot. Kemp’s opponent, Democrat Stacey Abrams, is vying to become the first African-American woman in U.S. history to serve as a governor. The state has undergone a dramatic influx of African Americans and Latinos whose votes could challenge Republican dominance, and her campaign is trying to turn out people of color, who are more likely to be infrequent voters. If the race is close, the July 2017 purge could affect the outcome.

Georgia: Courts asked to help new citizens vote | Atlanta Journal Constitution

Civil rights groups are asking a federal judge to allow new Americans to vote in Georgia’s election if they show proof of citizenship. The groups filed an emergency motion Friday asking the courts to intervene so that citizens inaccurately labeled as non-citizens can still vote in this year’s race for governor between Democrat Stacey Abrams and Republican Brian Kemp. The voter registrations of more than 3,600 people have been put on hold in Georgia because their citizenship hasn’t been verified. These potential voters are among over 53,000 people whose registrations are pending because of the state’s “exact match” law requiring registration applications to match government records.

Georgia: Voting Begins Amid Accusations of Voter Suppression | The New York Times

Wim Laven arrived to his polling location in Atlanta’s northern suburbs this week unsure what to make of recent allegations of voter difficulties at the ballot box. Then he waited two hours in the Georgia sun; saw one person in the line treated for heat exhaustion; and watched a second collapse, receive help from paramedics, yet refuse to be taken to the hospital — so he could remain in line and cast his ballot. Mr. Laven is now a believer. “I have a hard time imaging this is anything but an intentional effort,” said Mr. Laven, who teaches political science at Kennesaw State University. “I can’t imagine this is just pure incompetence. Everyone knew how serious people have been around here about getting out the vote.”

Editorials: Georgia’s ‘exact match’ law could disenfranchise 909,540 eligible voters, my research finds | Ted Enamorado/The Washington Post

Recently, there’s been an uproar about Georgia’s approach to voter registration. The state’s “exact match” law, passed last year, requires that citizens’ names on their government-issued IDs must precisely match their names as listed on the voter rolls. If the two don’t match, additional verification by a local registrar will be necessary. The Georgia NAACP and other civil rights groups have filed a lawsuit arguing that the measure, effective since July 2017, is aimed at disenfranchising racial minorities in the upcoming midterm elections. Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp, a Republican who is running for governor against Democrat Stacey Abrams, has put on hold more than 53,000 voters so far, given mismatches in the names in their voting records and other sources of identification such as driver’s licenses and Social Security cards. If the measure takes effect, voters whose information does not exactly match across sources will need to bring a valid photo ID to the polls on Election Day to vote. That could suppress voter turnout, either because some voters lack IDs or because voters are confused about whether they are eligible. Proponents of the rule assert that it is only meant to prevent illegal voting. But is missing a hyphen, an initial instead of a complete middle name, or just having a discrepancy in one letter in a voter’s name good evidence that the voter is not who they say they are? How would we know?

North Dakota: A Look at Where North Dakota’s Voter ID Controversy Stands | The New York Times

North Dakota is home to one of the most important Senate races of 2018, and less than three weeks before Election Day, it’s embroiled in a fierce battle over who will be able to participate. nOn Oct. 9, the Supreme Court allowed a new state voter identification requirement to take effect, meaning North Dakotans will be voting under different rules than in the primaries just a few months ago. The change disproportionately affects Native Americans, and tribal leaders and advocacy groups have spent the past week and a half scrambling. In a recent letter to the North Dakota secretary of state, one group called the state’s current process unworkable and proposed a solution, but the secretary of state would not endorse it. It is an extraordinary situation: the electoral process thrown into chaos at the last minute in a state that will help decide which party controls the Senate. Here’s a look at where things stand.

Tennessee: Glitches, suspicion overshadow heavy start of early voting | The Daily Memphian

When the first day of early voting in advance of the Nov. 6 election day had ended Wednesday, Shelby County election commissioner Norma Lester offered her verdict on how it went with a brief Facebook post. “Don’t know any other way to say it except the first day of Early Voting was absolute HELL!” she wrote. “Hoping for a better Second day.” A total of 11,445 Shelby County voters cast their ballots on the first day of the voting period that runs through Nov. 1 and takes in 27 polling places countywide. The total, which includes absentee ballots, is more than three times the 3,215 early voters at 20 sites on the opening day of early voting for the same election cycle in 2014 and more than double the 4,713 at 21 sites in 2010. The total early voting turnout was 84,711 four years ago and 109,232 in 2010.

Texas: Attorneys: Fraud charges an attempt to suppress Texas vote | Fort Worth Star-Telegram

Recent charges alleging that four women are part of an organized voter fraud ring on the city’s north side — announced just weeks before the Nov. 6 midterm election — are political moves geared to diminish minority voting in one of the state’s reddest counties, two attorneys allege. “They are political footballs being kicked back and forth by people who have a vested interest in suppressing minority vote,” said Greg Westfall, who along with Frank Sellers is representing one of the women, Leticia Sanchez Tepichin. “They are mothers and grandmothers. They are active in the community. “They are being used by people who want to justify voter ID,” he said. “At the end of the day, there’s not going to be any fraud in this deal.” These comments come one week after Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office announced that four people were arrested — Tepichin, her mother Leticia Sanchez, Maria Solis and Laura Parra — after being indicted on dozens of felony counts of voter fraud.

Kansas: Meet The Kansas Woman Who Exposed Security Flaws In Kris Kobach’s Voter Fraud Tool | KCUR

Come in and sit down at Anita Parsa’s kitchen table. Help yourself to the chocolate chip cookies and she’ll get you an iced tea. Might as well make yourself comfortable. Because for the next hour, she’s going to school you on a massive voter-tracking program run by Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach. “I like to figure out puzzles,” Parsa says. “I like to crack things, and that’s what this is all about.” This particular puzzle was Kobach’s Interstate Crosscheck system, which holds voter registration data for 25 states. A list of more than 85 million voters, it purports to catch election fraud by weeding out double voting. Crosscheck reportedly provided the numbers behind President Donald Trump’s baseless claim, after the 2016 election, that he would have won the popular vote “if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally” – an assertion that Kobach had helped fuel. After his inauguration, when Trump appointed Kobach, with Vice President Mike Pence, to lead his now-defunct Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, Kobach attempted to take the Crosscheck model national. His idea was to get federal jury-service data to identify duplicate voter registrations, according to public documents.

National: November Elections and the Art of Voter Suppression | Union of Concerned Scientists

Voting rights violations are emerging across several states with less than a month before the conclusion of midterm elections in the United States. As a result of discriminatory election laws and procedures, representation and policy making power could be distorted in favor of powerful, entrenched interests, against the will of a majority of the electorate. The threat of such democratic dysfunction illustrates the need for meaningful electoral reform and the protection of voting rights for all citizens. Early voting is underway in seventeen states, including at least two states where voting rights have already become a flashpoint in pivotal elections. In North Dakota, Senator Heidi Heitkamp and challenger Kevin Cramer is in a race that Cook Political Report rates as a “toss up.” The election could determine control over the US Senate—but the Supreme Court of the United States just refused to block the state’s discriminatory practice of requiring voter identification from a residential street address.

Georgia: High rate of absentee ballots thrown out in Gwinnett County | Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Nearly one in 10 vote-by-mail ballots have been rejected by Gwinnett County election officials, alarming voting rights groups. Gwinnett is throwing out far more absentee ballots than any other county in Georgia, according to records from the Secretary of State’s Office. Ballots were discarded because of allegedly mismatched signatures, incomplete forms or missing residential addresses. The county rejected 390 absentee ballots through Sunday, which represents 8.5 percent of all mailed ballots received in Gwinnett so far, according to state figures. Across Georgia, less than 2 percent of absentee ballots have been rejected. Gwinnett accounts for about 37 percent of all rejected ballots in Georgia.

National: GOP claims of voter fraud threat fuel worries about ballot access in November | The Washington Post

Nine months after President Trump was forced to dissolve a panel charged with investigating voter fraud, GOP officials across the country are cracking down on what they describe as threats to voting integrity — moves that critics see as attempts to keep some Americans from casting ballots in November’s elections. In Georgia, election officials have suspended more than 50,000 applications to register to vote, most of them for black voters, under a rigorous Republican-backed law that requires personal information to exactly match driver’s license or Social Security records. In Texas, the state attorney general has prosecuted nearly three dozen individuals on charges of voter fraud this year, more than the previous five years combined. And in North Carolina, a U.S. attorney and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) issued subpoenas last month demanding that virtually all voting records in 44 counties be turned over to immigration authorities within weeks — a move that was delayed after objections from state election officials.

Wisconsin: ‘One Person, No Vote’ Highlights Impact Of Voter Suppression Laws | WUWM

At the founding of the United States, the right to vote belonged to a privileged few. White, male, property owners were the only people directly steering the fate of this nation. It took significant struggles to change that. The Civil War, women’s suffrage and the Civil Rights movement were just pieces of the complex web of events that gave most adult U.S. citizens the right to vote. But progress isn’t always linear. There have been significant efforts to suppress the voting population over the last two decades. Gerrymandering, restrictive voter ID laws, and purged voter rolls have all led to the disenfranchisement of many citizens. Carol Anderson is the author of, One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression is Destroying Our Democracy chronicles the history of voter suppression in the U.S. and the ways that modern politicians are trying to suppress the vote in states throughout the country. Wisconsin plays a starring role in the book. “There are a couple of ground zeros for this and Wisconsin, unfortunately, is one of them,” says Anderson. 

Georgia: Lawsuit challenges 53,000 stalled Georgia voter registrations | Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A federal lawsuit filed Thursday challenges a Georgia law that has stalled the voter registrations of more than 53,000 potential voters until they verify their basic information. The lawsuit, brought by several civil rights groups, asks a judge to overturn Georgia’s “exact match” law, which requires voter registration information to match driver’s licenses, state ID cards or Social Security records. The legal action comes after The Associated Press reported this week that at least 53,000 voter registrations were flagged because of the law. Those voter registrations are on hold because of discrepancies between application information and government records, such as a missing hyphen in a last name or data entry errors. But potential voters can still participate in this year’s elections if they show photo ID either when they go to vote or beforehand. They can also mail identification to county election officials in advance. If their ID resolves the discrepancy, they will immediately become active voters eligible to cast a normal ballot on Georgia’s voting machines.

Georgia: Democrat Abrams demands GOP’s Kemp resign as Georgia secretary of state amid ‘voter suppression’ uproar | CNN

Georgia Democrat Stacey Abrams’ campaign is calling on Republican Secretary of State Brian Kemp to resign following a report his office is using a controversial verification law to effectively suppress the minority vote in their race to become the state’s next governor. The demand from the Abrams campaign comes in response to an Associated Press report on records it obtained showing Georgia has put a hold on more than 53,000 voter registration applications — nearly seven-in-ten of them belonging to African Americans — because they failed to clear the state’s “exact match” standard. Under the policy, even the most minor discrepancy — like a typo or missing letter — between a voter’s registration and their drivers license, social security or state ID cards can be flagged.

Georgia: Voting Rights Become A Flashpoint In Georgia Governor’s Race | Associated Press

Marsha Appling-Nunez was showing the college students she teaches how to check online if they’re registered to vote when she made a troubling discovery. Despite being an active Georgia voter who had cast ballots in recent elections, she was no longer registered. “I was kind of shocked,” said Appling-Nunez, who moved from one Atlanta suburb to another in May and believed she had successfully changed her address on the voter rolls. “I’ve always voted. I try to not miss any elections, including local ones,” Appling-Nunez said. She tried re-registering, but with about one month left before a November election that will decide a governor’s race and some competitive U.S. House races, Appling-Nunez’s application is one of over 53,000 sitting on hold with Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp’s office. And unlike Appling-Nunez, many people on that list — which is predominantly black, according to an analysis by The Associated Press — may not even know their voter registration has been held up.

Editorials: Voter Suppression Is No Excuse – Yes, it’s an outrage. But it is not the main reason that voter turnout is so low. | David Leonhardt/The New York Times

“My message in this upcoming election is very simple: It’s vote,” Barack Obama told his former speechwriter Jon Favreau in a recent episode of “The Wilderness” podcast. “It’s not that much to ask.” “This isn’t really a 50-50 country. It’s like a 60-40 country,” Obama continued. “Democrats could and will do even better if every one of your listeners not only votes but makes sure that all your wishy-washy, excuse-making, Internet-surfing, TV-watching, grumbling-but-not-doing-nothing friends and family members get to the polls. Vote.” Obama was clearly smiling as he delivered the line. But as soon as I heard it, I knew the reaction that many progressives would likely have: Don’t blame us — blame voter suppression! It’s the same reaction that I’ve heard when I have written about the miserably low voter-turnout rates in midterm elections.

Arizona: How Arizona Officials May Obstruct Thousands Of Voters | National Memo

As the close of voter registration approaches in Arizona for the November 6 midterms, it is more than likely that thousands—if not tens of thousands—of registered voters who recently moved inside the state will be walking into a trap on Election Day. At best, they will face an annoying and inconvenient runaround to find a polling place to cast a ballot that will count. But just as likely many voters who moved to another county will find that their voting status has been suspended for the 2018 election. The reasons for this likely quagmire are numerous. Some of the blame falls on Arizona residents who moved and didn’t revise their voter registration information. But a larger share of the blame falls on the state, especially two agencies involved in elections, for a series of uneven, bureaucratically opaque, and even legally dubious moves that don’t come down on the side of ensuring that all already-registered voters can participate.

National: America’s unfair voting laws | The Economist

It its latest report on minority voting rights in America, published this month, the bipartisan United States Commission on Civil Rights reports that a range of restrictive voting measures have been enacted by states in recent years. They range from laws demanding that voters produce specific forms of identification to reductions in the number of locations where people can cast their ballot. These laws have a disproportionate effect on the ability of minority groups to exercise their voting rights. And thanks to a 2013 Supreme Court decision that weakens federal authority to restrict such laws, they are remaining on the books. The 1965 Voting Rights Act and its extensions helped dismantle generations of rules and regulations that had disenfranchised minority voters—and in particular black Americans. One of the act’s major provisions mandated that jurisdictions with a history of voter rights discrimination, including Texas, North Carolina, and seven other states, had to “pre-clear” new voting requirements. This involved persuading the federal government or a three-judge panel that the requirements would not be discriminatory in impact.  But in 2013, the Supreme Court struck down the pre-clearance process.

National: Is There Voter Suppression In 2018? Here’s What It Could Look Like In The Midterms | Bustlea

Voter suppression is a serious issue that takes many forms — but it’s a lot more subtle than you might think. When it comes to voter suppression in the midterms, you might not even know it’s happening, but you can bet that a bunch of (strategically placed) red tape will end up blocking some people from voting this year. Basically, any action taken with the goal of preventing or dissuading you from voting is voter suppression. You often hear about voter suppression in the context of policies that have made it harder for certain groups of people, or for people who live in certain areas, to cast their ballots. These barriers are bureaucratic for the most part. Voting rights advocates point to voter ID requirements, decreased early voting opportunities, polling station closures, voter roll purges, and gerrymandering as means of voter suppression. Voting rights groups like the American Civil Liberties Union are challenging most of these obstacles in court, but there’s still the possibility you could run into difficulties at the polls. Don’t panic, though. There are a few simple steps you can take to make sure you (and the people you know) don’t encounter any barriers to voting this year. Let’s walk through some of the hurdles that could prevent you from voting, and then we’ll talk about what you can do about them.

Kansas: ACLU sues for Johnson County voters’ names whose ballots were rejected | The Kansas City Star

The American Civil Liberties Union is suing to get the names of Johnson County voters who cast provisional ballots in the August primary. The ACLU also wants a list of voters in the county who cast advance mail ballots that were rejected because their signature didn’t match their voter record. The lawsuit comes after a tumultuous Republican primary election for gov rnor that exposed sometimes-subjective vote counting. Some Kansas counties counted ballots that would have been tossed out in others in a race between Secretary of State Kris Kobach and Gov. Jeff Colyer that was decided by fewer than 350 votes. “We aren’t asking to see who they voted for or any private information,” said Lauren Bonds, the ACLU of Kansas’ legal director, in a statement. “That information should be afforded the utmost privacy. However, people should know whether their vote counted or if people faced any unnecessary barriers to voting. The public interest here is just transparency.”

Texas: One Republican Official Challenged Thousands Of Voter Registrations In His County. It Could Happen Elsewhere. | HuffPost

In late July, Alan Vera, the chair of the Harris County Republican Party’s Ballot Security Committee, put on a patriotic necktie, walked into the voter registration office in Houston and challenged the registrations of some 4,000 voters — there were duplicates — in his county. A few weeks later, Lynn Lane, the official photographer for the Houston Grand Opera, noticed a letter he’d sorted for recycling. The county voting registrar, the letter said, had received information that his current address was different than the one on his registration record, and he had 30 days to respond. When Lane checked his voter registration status online, he said, it was already listed as suspended. But Lane — an active voter and a Democrat — has lived in the same location for five years, he told HuffPost.

North Carolina: In Rare Moment, GOP Sides With Democrats To Fight Elections Subpoena | WFAE

The North Carolina Board of Elections 9-0 vote last week to fight a wide-ranging subpoena from the U.S. Justice Department was a rare moment of bipartisanship in the state, with Republicans saying the federal government overreached in an apparent effort to fight voter fraud. The board’s four Republicans voted with the four Democratic members and one unaffiliated member. The U.S. Justice Department and Immigration and Customs Enforcement have asked for more than 20 million election documents and ballots, from 2010. The subpoena asked for about 2.3 million absentee ballots from the last five years. Absentee ballots – which were mostly cast during early voting – are traceable to the voter. That means the federal government could have determined how people voted.

North Carolina: DMV also gets subpoena for voter documents | Associated Press

Federal investigators seeking a massive number of voting records from North Carolina election officials also want voter registration documents from the state Division of Motor Vehicles. A DMV spokesman confirmed Monday that the agency had received a subpoena recently from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Raleigh. Prosecutors want voter registration applications since 2010 that meet at least one of the several criteria, including applications from foreign-born applicants and from non-U.S. citizens “completed in a language other than English,” according to a copy of the subpoena. The state elections board is already fighting to block federal subpoenas sent to it and 44 county elections boards, calling them overly broad and unreasonable. The state board estimated those requests for ballots, poll books, absentee ballot requests, registration applications and other documents would cover more than 20 million records.

North Carolina: Justice Dept. Demand for North Carolina Voting Records Extended to D.M.V. | The New York Times

In a further sign of the sprawling nature of the Justice Department’s effort to collect voting records in North Carolina, prosecutors demanded eight years of information from the state’s Division of Motor Vehicles, according to a copy of the subpoena obtained by The New York Times. The newly disclosed order, along with subpoenas sent to the state’s elections board and counties, appears linked to a federal inquiry into illegal voting by noncitizens. Under federal law, residents seeking to obtain or renew a driver’s license must be offered a chance to register to vote. The demand from the government seeks voter-registration forms submitted to the North Carolina D.M.V. by an array of applicants since 2010. The applicants include those who are foreign-born, said they were not citizens, did not produce a driver’s license as proof of identification, or displayed nonimmigrant visas or other documents “that reflect the applicant was not a United States citizen.”

North Carolina: Election Officials Get Extension for Voting Records Request | Wall Street Journal

Federal prosecutors on Thursday postponed a deadline for North Carolina election officials to provide voting records requested by federal immigration officials until after the Nov. 6 election. The U.S. Attorney’s office for the Eastern District of North Carolina said in a letter that prosecutors would postpone the deadline until January and consider modifying the request, as long as election officials verified in writing that they wouldn’t destroy any relevant records. Prosecutors, at the request of immigration officials, had originally requested more than 20 million county and state records covering an eight-year period to be turned over by Sept. 25. North Carolina election officials had argued the effort required to collect the records would jeopardize their ability to prepare for this fall’s election.

North Carolina: Justice Department Demands Millions of North Carolina Voter Records, Confounding Elections Officials | The New York Times

Federal prosecutors have issued sweeping subpoenas demanding that millions of North Carolina voter records be turned over to immigration authorities by Sept. 25. With just two months to go before the midterms, the subpoenas threatened to sow chaos in the state’s election machinery, while renewing the Trump administration’s repeatedly discredited claims of widespread voting by illegal immigrants. The unsealed grand jury subpoenas were sent to the state elections board and to 44 county elections boards in eastern North Carolina. Their existence became widely known after Marc E. Elias, a voting rights lawyer aligned with the Democratic Party, mentioned them on Twitter. Though the nature, scope and impetus of the federal investigation that generated the subpoenas remain shrouded in mystery, the move appeared to be part of an effort to find and crack down on any unauthorized voting by noncitizens. Representatives of ICE and the Justice Department officials involved declined to comment on the matter.

North Carolina: Investigators seek massive North Carolina voting records | Associated Press

Federal investigators in North Carolina are seeking an enormous number of voting records from dozens of election offices weeks before the midterm elections, demands that may signal their expanded efforts to prosecute illegal voting by people who are not U.S. citizens. The U.S. attorney’s office in Raleigh issued subpoenas in recent days on behalf of Immigration and Customs Enforcement to the North Carolina elections board and more than 40 county boards in the eastern third of the state, according to the subpoenas and the state board. The same federal prosecutor announced two weeks ago that 19 foreign nationals were charged with registering to vote or casting ballots illegally because they weren’t U.S. citizens. More than half were indicted by a grand jury in Wilmington, according to an Aug. 24 news release from U.S. Attorney Bobby Higdon’s office.

National: Polling Places Remain a Target Ahead of November Elections | Stateline

In the five years since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down key parts of the Voting Rights Act, nearly a thousand polling places have been shuttered across the country, many of them in southern black communities. The trend continues: This year alone, 10 counties with large black populations in Georgia closed polling spots after a white elections consultant recommended they do so to save money. When the consultant suggested a similar move in Randolph County, pushback was enough to keep its nine polling places open. But the closures come amid a tightening of voter ID laws in many states that critics view as an effort to make it harder for blacks and other minorities to vote — and, in Georgia specifically, the high-profile gubernatorial bid by a black woman. The ballot in November features Stacey Abrams, a Democrat trying to become the first black woman elected governor in the United States, versus Brian Kemp, the Republican secretary of state who has led efforts in Georgia to purge voter rolls, slash early voting and close polling places.

Georgia: Voting locations closed across Georgia after Supreme Court ruling | Atlanta Journal Constitution

When a passionate crowd rallied to save polling places in rural Randolph County, it won a high-profile battle for voting access. But voters trying to preserve their local precincts are losing the war as voting locations are vanishing across Georgia. County election officials have closed 214 precincts across the state since 2012, according to an analysis by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. That figure means nearly 8 percent of the state’s polling places, from fire stations to schools, have shut their doors over the past six years. Voting rights activists see the poll closures as an attempt to suppress turnout by African-American voters, but local election officials say they’re saving taxpayers’ money by consolidating precincts at a time when more Georgians are taking advantage of early voting.