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.