Judge Orders Georgia’s Brian Kemp To Give Thousands More People A Shot At Voting

A federal judge in Georgia on Friday ordered state Secretary of State Brian Kemp to establish additional procedures to guarantee that voters flagged by the state as potential noncitizens can vote in the 2018 election if they can prove their citizenship.

The decision from U.S. District Judge Eleanor Ross is a win for voting rights groups who are suing the state over its so-called “exact match” system for registering new voters. The ruling is expected to affect 3,141 people who registered but whose registrations were considered pending because the state couldn’t verify their citizenship. Overall, there are about 53,000 people whose voter registrations are pending because of a system that critics say is inaccurate and discriminatory. 

“From the perspective of these voters, every one of these 3,000 individual voters has an individual and constitutional right to vote,” said Danielle Lang, an attorney at the Campaign Legal Center representing the plaintiffs in the suit. “Elections in the United States are regularly decided by smaller margins than that and every vote counts.”

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