Project Vote has put a lot of work into Georgia over the years, because we think it’s worth the effort. The capitol of the South, Georgia is a state with a rich and vibrant history, a dynamic economy, and an increasingly diverse population. Unfortunately, it’s also a state with a long, dark legacy of racism and discrimination from which it has yet to fully emerge.
Since 2008 Project Vote has been working to help repair the damage this legacy has done to the state’s voting practices, and to help achieve an electorate in the state that fully represents the Georgia of the 21st century. We’ve supported voter registration drives in the state, brought lawsuits to enforce federal voting rights laws, and fought back against the implementation of discriminatory proof-of-citizenship requirements. We are committed to ensuring that Georgia election officials treat all members of its diverse citizenry equally.
So, today, Project Vote and our partners filed a new federal lawsuit to stop Georgia from continuing to wrongfully disenfranchise thousands of voter registration applicants, the majority of whom are people of color. The complaint was filed on behalf of our clients, the Georgia NAACP, the Georgia Coaltion for the People’s Agenda, and Asian Americans Advancing Justice – Atlanta.
Georgia uses a strict verification system for voter registration applications, in which a registrant’s information must match—perfectly—against the information in either the Department of Drivers’ Services (DDS) or Social Security Administration (SSA) database in order to be registered to vote. As we all know, however—and as the SSA has admitted—the information in these databases is prone to error, and the mismatch rates for such verification programs are notoriously high. In the month of July 2016 alone, more than 5,000 applications—48 percent of those Georgia submitted—failed the SSA matching process.
There is no question that Georgians who are eligible to vote are being wrongfully rejected by the state’s error-prone verification process. And the problem is not affecting all Georgians equally: African American, Latino, and Asian American applicants are being rejected at significantly higher rates than white applicants.
That’s why Project Vote and our partners have filed a lawsuit in federal court, charging that Georgia’s verification process violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA), as well as the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution. The VRA prohibits voting practices that unfairly discriminate on the basis of race, color, or language, and—as Project Vote attorney Michelle Kanter Cohen says in today’s press release about the case—”The staggering disproportion in Georgia’s rejection rates makes it clear that Georgians of color are being unfairly disenfranchised by this flawed and unfair process.”
Recent court victories in other states have sent a clear message to election officials that discriminatory voting practices will no longer be tolerated, and Project Vote is determined to keep delivering this message to the State of Georgia. We’ll keep you posted on our progress.
