Keeping Jim Crow Alive in Georgia With 'Exact Match'

Date
Publication
Who.What.Why
Expert

This history of minority-voter suppression is a bitter legacy — and a version of it lives on today in Georgia.  

The latest iteration is called “exact match” voter registration. A law enacted by the Republican-controlled state legislature, it requires that all information filled out on a voter registration form must exactly match that found in databases held by the Georgia Department of Driver Services or the Social Security Administration. Just the smallest disparity on a registration form lands the prospective voter on a “pending status” list.

“So many people are being swept up into this really flawed system,” Danielle Lang, spokesperson for the Campaign Legal Center in Washington, DC, told WhoWhatWhy

This has seemingly just been confirmed. A new report from the Associated Press shows that 53,000 new voter registrations are currently on hold because of exact match. And though African Americans make up 32 percent of the state’s population, a whopping 70 percent of these challenged registrations are those of black Georgians who want to vote in the upcoming election.

Read the full article