With voter suppression issues plaguing Georgia, officials face fresh lawsuits

As Georgia residents continue casting early ballots in the November midterm elections, civil rights groups are holding the state’s election officials accountable for policies they claim could result in voter suppression.

Civil rights groups and Georgia voters have filed multiple lawsuits against state and county officials concerning the state’s voting laws, in particular its rules governing mail-in absentee ballots and Georgia’s “exact match” policy, which requires voters’ registration data to exactly match their information in state databases.

The lawsuits come amid reports of alleged voter suppression in Georgia ahead of the November midterms. Largely due to the “exact match” policy, over 53,000 voter applications have reportedly been put on hold ahead of Election Day, resulting in canceled registrations for such small errors as a missing hyphen. A Washington Post analysis found that policy, which passed the state legislature in 2017, could have even broader effects: 30% of registered voters, a disproportionate number of whom are black or Hispanic, are currently noncompliant.

“[Georgia voters’] fundamental right to vote on Nov. 6 is imperiled by no fault of their own, but rather by Kemp’s continued use of the state’s flawed exact match process,” Danielle Lang, senior legal counsel of voting rights and redistricting at the Campaign Legal Center, said in a statement. The CLC, Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta are representing the plaintiffs in the case.

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