Lincoln park polling place shut down in 2016
95% of Lincoln Park is African American
Source: 2000 Census
62% of Randolph County is African American
Source: 2000 Census
Average cost of one county’s polling location - $4,000
Average cost of one county’s Christmas decoration budget - $18,000
Source: Mcdonough county budget
Since 2012 Georgia has closed 214 polling places affecting 1,294,032 voters
75% were in majority African American counties
Sources: https://sos.ga.gov and 2000 Census
Kemp put 53,260 voter registrations on hold
80% were people of color
The election was decided by 54,723
Source: Reuters analysis
Since 2013, Brian Kemp has purged over 890,000 eligible voters,
That’s 14% of Georgia’s electorate.
Sources: https://sos.ga.gov
Democratic Counties are purged at a rate of almost 4X that of Republican
60% of voters in Chatham County consistently vote Democratic
Sources: https://www.economist.com https://sos.ga.gov
In a single night in July 2017, Kemp purged over half a million people 8% of Georgia’s registered voters
97% of new absentee ballots in 2018 were from Democratic Counties.
Source: Fair Fight Action
281,490 Georgians requested absentee ballots
Tens of thousands did not receive them in time to vote
Sources: https://sos.ga.gov https://www.eac.gov
Student Voter Registration was up 10% in 2018
60% of Students Ages 18-25 Vote Democratic
Sources: TUFTS
Complaints to voter protection hotline were over 84,000
Source: Democratic Party of Georgia Voter Protection Hotline
Lawsuits filed:
Georgia Coalition for the Peoples’ Agenda V. Kemp
ACLU for Georgia Muslim Voter Project V. Kemp
Martin V. Kemp
Common Cause Georgia V. Brian Kemp
Fairfight Action and Care in Action V. Robyn A. Crittenden, Secretary of State and State Board Election Members
The Democratic Party of Georgia, INC., and AFG Group Inc, V. Robyn A. Crittenden, Secretary of State and State Election Officials of Dekalb and Gwinnett Counties
ACLU for Georgia Shift V. Gwinnett County
Source: public records
21,190 provisional ballots were cast
83% were from people of color
only 11,872 were counted
Sources: https://sos.ga.gov
Fair Fight Action
Since 2016 More than 17 Million voters have been purged nationwide
Source: The Brennan Center
New, Powerful Documentation of Racial Disparity in Waiting Times to Vote
Up until this point, almost all studies that have shown that African Americans have to wait to vote longer than whites have relied on survey data. This ingenious new study uses cell phone data instead. Their findings are even more damning than most of the analyses based on self-report. This analysis finds that, “Relative to entirely-white neighborhoods, residents of entirely-black neighborhoods waited 29% longer to vote and were 74% more likely to spend more than 30 minutes at their polling place. This disparity holds when comparing predominantly white and black polling places within the same states and counties.”
Source: drive.google.com/file
Voter File Purges
Earlier this month, the Brennan Center released its report on the 2018 cycle, Voter Purges: A Growing Threat to the Right to Vote. The report reveals that Republicans were even more aggressive last cycle than they had been, and that problems were especially egregious in counties freed from oversight by the Shelby decision.
- Purge rates are higher than a decade ago. In the 2008 cycle 97 counties purged more than 15 percent of their files; in 2016, 205 did so.
- Purge rates higher in ex-VRA counties higher still. Before Shelby County, pre-clearance jurisdictions had removal rates equal to other jurisdictions. After 2013, the two groups sharply diverged. The purge rate in non-covered counties did not budge, but the purge rate increased in the median previously covered jurisdiction by 2 points.
- States continue to conduct flawed purges.
- Federal Role in Voter Protection Diminished
The report also points to new and expanding dangers on the horizon.
- Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck Program (Crosscheck)
- Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC)
- Efforts to Purge Noncitizens Are More Frequent and Often Rely on Flawed Data
- Activist Groups Pressing for More Aggressive Purges