Mother Jones: Brian Kemp’s Win In Georgia Is Tainted by Voter Suppression

Mother Jones: Brian Kemp’s Win In Georgia Is Tainted by Voter Suppression

“The number of people who cast provisional ballots,” says Sara Henderson, executive director of Common Cause Georgia, “doesn’t even come close to the number of people who were disenfranchised.” The Abrams campaign heard from 25,000 people who had problems voting. Henderson helped oversee election protection efforts for nonpartisan voting rights groups and said “our phones in the command center were ringing off the hook.”

India Owens, a 22-year-old African American woman, voted in the 2016 presidential election at Union Grove Baptist Church in Auburn, Georgia, an exurb of Atlanta. Two years later, she hadn’t moved or changed her address, but when she returned to her polling place on the morning of November 6, 2018, she was told by poll workers that she was not registered to vote. She was not offered a provisional ballot and left without voting. She returned later that day and demanded a provisional ballot, but she does not know if it was counted.

Owens’ story was not an isolated incident in Georgia this election. There were a multitude of voting problems in the gubernatorial race between Republican Brian Kemp and Democrat Stacey Abrams. Eligible voters didn’t show up on the registration rolls or were purged by the state. Thousands of Georgians had their registrations put on hold and weren’t sure if they’d be able to vote. Some voters were wrongly flagged as non-citizens; others had their ballots rejected because poll workers told them they had the wrong ID. Hundreds of polling places were shuttered before the election, and other precincts had four-hour lines. Absentee ballots were rejected because of signature mismatches or other minor errors. One Abrams adviser described it as “death by a thousand paper cuts.” …

“The number of people who cast provisional ballots,” says Sara Henderson, executive director of Common Cause Georgia, “doesn’t even come close to the number of people who were disenfranchised.” The Abrams campaign heard from 25,000 people who had problems voting. Henderson helped oversee election protection efforts for nonpartisan voting rights groups and said “our phones in the command center were ringing off the hook.”