October 17, 2014

In September, Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp expressed concern that too many minority voters were registering to vote for the November midterms and so he found it necessary to subpoena the records of at least one group working to register more Black and Latino voters.

Now he has gone and "lost" 40,000 voter registration forms handed in by one group.

The Root:

According to an Al-Jazeera report, it’s a sentiment that the staffers at Third Sector Development are expressing. The nonprofit organization was on a mission to register as many black and Hispanic people in the state of Georgia as possible so that voter turnout for the upcoming midterm elections in November would be high. And they were successful at it, until they received word that about half of the applications they submitted for processing have gone missing in action.

“Over the last few months, the group submitted some 80,000 voter-registration forms to the Georgia secretary of state’s office—but as of last week, about half those new registrants, more than 40,000 Georgians, were still not listed on preliminary voter rolls. And there is no public record of those 40,000-plus applications, according to state Rep. Stacey Adams, a Democrat,” Al-Jazeera explained.

But Secretary Kemp says, hey, we're not doing anything differently. Sure they're not.

Georgia Secretary of State Brain Kemp explained that his office is not doing anything differently from how it usually processes applications. But some people aren’t buying his story, seeing as how he’s a Republican, and black and Hispanic people tend to vote for Democrats.

Georgia Republicans have been raising eyebrows for some time now with regard to early voting and voter-ID issues. One state Republican didn’t like how black and Hispanic voters had easy access to early-voting opportunities.

They cut early voting, they've got horrible Voter ID laws, and now the Secretary of State has 40,000 less voter registration forms than were submitted. Jim Crow is alive and well in Georgia and surrounds, isn't it?

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