53,000 Applications Are On Hold, But Can The Applicants Still Vote?

The 53,000 voter registration applications pending with the Georgia Secretary of State’s office don’t mean the applicants can’t vote, according to Brian Kemp’s campaign.

“They’re in a pending status,” Ryan Mahoney, communications coordinator for Georgia Secretary of State Kemp’s gubernatorial run, said. “They have 26 months to present additional information, or they can just show up and vote and present their photo ID as required by Georgia law. That information will be taken on the spot, and they’ll be able to vote. Not a provisional ballot.”

The applications are pending due to Georgia’s “exact match” policy. A similar group of nonprofits, including the New Georgia Project sued Brian Kemp over the “exact match” law Thursday.

Danielle Lang is senior legal counsel for the Campaign Legal Center, which is part of the suit.

“This policy doesn’t flag the right people and leads to an extraordinarily high error rate where tens of thousands of eligible voters are flagged for potential removal based on a hyphen here or a space there,” Danielle Lang, the center’s senior legal counsel, said. “They should not have been caught up in this net to begin with. These are eligible voters who have turned in complete and accurate voter registration forms. It’s only because Georgia has implemented a faulty process that they are in any danger of losing their right to vote.”

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