Missing hyphens could make it hard to vote in US election

A voter registration sign appears during a registration drive by voting rights group New Project Georgia in Austell, Georgia. Picture: Chris Aluka Berry/Reuters

A voter registration sign appears during a registration drive by voting rights group New Project Georgia in Austell, Georgia. Picture: Chris Aluka Berry/Reuters

Published Apr 11, 2018

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Atlanta/New York - Fabiola Diaz, 18,

sits in the food court of her Georgia high school and

meticulously fills out a voter registration form.

Driver’s license in one hand, she carefully writes her

license number in the box provided, her first name, last name,

address, her eyes switching from license to the paper form and

back again to ensure every last detail, down to hyphens and

suffixes, is absolutely correct.

Diaz, and the voting rights activists holding a voter

registration drive at South Cobb High School in northern

Atlanta, know why it is so important not to make an error.

A law passed by the Republican-controlled Georgia state

legislature last year requires that all of the letters and

numbers of the applicant's name, date of birth, driver’s license

number and last four digits of their Social Security number

exactly match the same letters and numbers in the motor vehicle

department or Social Security databases.

The tiniest discrepancy on a registration form places them

on a “pending” voter list. A Reuters analysis of Georgia's

pending voter list, obtained through a public records request,

found that black voters landed on the list at a far higher rate

than white voters even though a majority of Georgia's voters are

white.

Both voting rights activists and Georgia's state government

say the reason for this is that blacks more frequently fill out

paper ballots than whites, who are more likely to do them

online. Paper ballots are more prone to human error, both sides

agree. But they disagree on whether the errors are made by those

filling out the forms or officials processing the forms.

Democrats and voting rights groups say the “exact match” law

could make the difference in a tight congressional election,

like the one in Georgia's 6th congressional district in

November, as blacks tend to vote for the Democratic Party. If

Democrats can gain 24 seats they will be able to win control of

the U.S. House of Representatives and block President Donald

Trump's legislative agenda.

A few thousand votes could decide the race in the 6th

district. In a special election there last year, Republican

Karen Handel defeated Democrat Jon Ossoff by just over 9 000

votes, out of about 260 000 cast. Trump won the northern Atlanta

district by 1 percent of the vote in 2016.

Students at South Cobb High School in Atlanta register to vote during a registration drive by voting rights group New Project Georgia in Austell. Picture: Chris Aluka Berry/Reuters

DISPARITY

The Democratic Party has said that changes to voting laws in

Republican-controlled states are part of a concerted effort to

reduce turnout among particular groups of voters on election

day. Republicans deny that the voting laws are discriminatory

and say they are intended to reduce fraudulent votes.

In Georgia, exact match was state policy for several years.

The state was sued over the policy and settled the case in

February 2017. Later in the year the Republican-controlled

statehouse made it law, with some changes. That new law will be

in effect for the first time in statewide elections this

November.

Ohio and Florida are the only other states to implement

exact match provisions since 2008, according to the non-partisan

Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, which advocates

for voting rights and fair elections.

More than 82 percent of the roughly 56 000 voter registrants

given “pending” voter status in Georgia between August 2013 and

February 2018 were there because they had fallen foul of the

exact match policy, according to state data reviewed by Reuters

In a state where roughly 31 percent of residents are African

American, nearly 72 percent of those on that list were African

American. Just under 10 percent of the people on the list were

white although, according to 2016 U.S. Census data, 54 percent

of Georgia's population are white non-Hispanics.

Voting rights groups say based on their experience of

previous elections, the practice of exact match sows confusion,

suppressing turnout, and that overstretched county workers are

more likely to add a voter to a pending list to save time and

meet deadlines.

Students at South Cobb High School in Atlanta carefully double-check the details on their driver's licenses and permits as they register to vote. Picture: Chris Aluka Berry/Reuters

Brian Kemp, Georgia's Republican secretary of state, manages

the state's elections. He argues the state's exact-match law is

fair. Candice Broce, a spokesperson for Kemp, said more blacks

end up on the pending voter list than whites because black

voters used paper registrations more often than white voters.

Georgia contends that more than twice as many black

residents registered to vote by paper than did white residents,

and that substantially all of the pending voters came from paper

registrations.

Broce blamed voter registration groups such as the New

Georgia Project, which held the registration drive at Diaz's

high school, for registering voters predominately with paper

forms, and then turning in "incomplete, illegible, or fraudulent

forms," which skews the data.

Broce added there was no significant racial disparity in

voters landing on the pending list when they registered online.

She said the issue "is limited to paper applications."

Nse Ufot, executive director of New Georgia Project, called

Broce's comments "ridiculous" and said the problem was most

likely caused by human error during the state's transcription of

the data on the paper forms to a computer. Errors occur because

the counties, who record registrations, are short-staffed,

workers are improperly trained, and often in a hurry to make

election deadlines, she said.

FIXING ERRORS

Under the new law, voters placed on the list do have 26

months to rectify any error, and if they present a valid ID card

at a polling place, they can vote. But voting activists like

those at the Brennan Center say many people may not realize they

are on the pending list in the first place.

When a voter on a pending list checks their personal voter

page on the Georgia Secretary of State’s website, it tells them

to check their status with county officials. Nowhere does it

inform the voter that they have been placed in pending status.

Voting groups say some minority voters don't have access to

the state's website as they do not own computers. Additionally,

based on past experiences with exact match, they say temporary

poll workers sometimes do not know how to fix errors or what

pending status actually means.

Voting rights could become a flashpoint in this November’s

race for governor in Georgia.

Kemp, the secretary of state, is running for office, as is

Stacey Abrams, the former Democratic House minority leader in

Georgia’s state assembly and the founder of the New Georgia

Project. The two have clashed in the past, with Kemp accusing

the group of voter fraud, and Abrams accusing Kemp of voter

suppression.

Reuters

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