AAPI Vote 2018: Judge strikes down Georgia's voter suppresion rule

CITIZENS bearing unfamiliar foreign names and recently naturalized citizens will be allowed to vote after a federal judge ruled against the state's strictly enforced "exact match" law.

U.S. District Judge Eleanor Ross ruled on Friday (Nov. 2) that Georgia must ease enforcement of restrictions that could prevent more than 3,000 people from voting.

The rulings are a rebuke to Secretary of State Brian Kemp, whose office oversees the voter rolls and who is the Republican candidate in the state’s hotly contested gubernatorial race.

The "exact match" law flags voter registrations that have discrepancies with other official identification documents used by the state. Mismatches can occur under the law for such reasons as missing hyphens, accent marks and middle initials. Those who are flagged can still vote if they settle the discrepancy by providing proof of identity.

Civil rights groups filed suit, arguing that the law's requirements are part of a discriminatory voter suppression effort that disenfranchises predominantly minority voters. Brian Kemp, the Republican candidate for governor who also oversees the vote as Georgia's secretary of state, says the law is vital for election integrity.

In her ruling, Ross said the requirements raised "grave concerns for the Court about the differential treatment inflicted on a group of individuals who are predominantly minorities. ... The election scheme here places a severe burden on these individuals."

Ross directed Kemp’s office to allow county election officials to permit individuals flagged and placed in pending status due to citizenship to vote a regular ballot by furnishing proof of citizenship to poll managers or deputy registrars.

“To be clear, once an individual’s citizenship has been verified by a deputy registrar or a poll manager, that individual may cast a regular ballot and the vote counts,” Ross said.

Kemp is further directed to update the Georgia Secretary of State website to provide “clear instructions and guidance to voters in pending status due to citizenship” and a contact name and telephone number that individuals may call with questions about the pending status due to citizenship.

The order further directs county boards of elections to post a list of acceptable documentation to prove citizenship, which includes a naturalization certificate, birth certificate issued by a state or territory within the United States, U.S. passport, and “other documents or affidavits explicitly identified by Georgia law and listed on the Georgia Secretary of State’s website, at polling places on Election Day.”

If proof cannot be provided on site, voters will be allowed to submit provisional ballots and provide the needed information to a registrar before the Friday after the election.

"Prior to the court's ruling, these voters, many of whom provided proof of citizenship with their registration form, would have had to physically track down a Deputy Registrar in the county to provide proof of their citizenship," said Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, one of the groups that brought the lawsuit.

 "Tracking this one individual down was a fatal requirement that would have been impossible for many to meet."

A report by The Associated Press said that under the "exact match" law, Kemp had stalled more than 50,000 voter registrations by mostly black voters. The AP also reported that through a process Kemp calls "voter roll maintenance," his office has "cancelled over 1.4 million voter registrations since 2012" and that "nearly 670,000 registrations were cancelled in 2017 alone."

Voting rights been a central issue in Kemp's race against Democrat Stacey Abrams, who is vying to become the nation's first black female governor. 

The ballots of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders were being rejected at four times the rate of White voters in Gwinnett County.

The ballots of 102 out of 404 ballots cast by Asian Americans had been rejected - a rejection rate of just over 20 percent. 

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ACLU's Dale Ho takes on voter suppression in Kansas

SCREEN CAPTURE / MSNBC

The right to vote should be a given in our country, but it’s not. Our country has a long history of suppressing the vote, but the efforts of Donald Trump’s allies have been truly extraordinary. They are a thinly veiled attempt to suppress the vote for youth, people of color, and low-income people. 

"We've got to stop them," says Dale Ho, the ACLU's Voting Rights Project Director. 

In this new video below, Ho explains this vicious agenda the day before the ACLU goes to trial challenging the voter suppression law in Kansas. Watch and share with your friends to spread the word. 

Take Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who headed Trump's sham commission on "Election Integrity." In 2013, Kansas enacted a law he proposed that requires Kansans to produce citizenship documents – like a birth certificate or U.S. passport – in order to register to vote. It had a devastating impact on voter registration in the state – particularly for people under age 30, who represented almost half of the voter registrations blocked by the law.

More than 35,000 people were blocked from registering to vote because of Kobach's unnecessary and burdensome law. That's about one in seven would-be voters. The case went to federal trial Tuesday, March 6.

A big part of the case will be whether Kobach can show that current federal law is not doing enough to combat voter fraud. The federal form to register to vote requires a person to swear under penalty of perjury that he or she is a citizen, a safeguard Kobach said Tuesday was too weak and “like nothing.”

"The law has made voter registration drives in Kansas all but impossible," says Ho. "Most people don't carry around copies of their birth certificates or passports, and they usually don't hand them out to strangers. Not everyone has a copy of their birth certificate, and securing one can take time and money." 

Kobach's law is based on false allegations of voter fraud by noncitizens – a trope Trump has been promoting ever since he lost the popular vote in 2016. Kobach bases his claims on an outright misinterpretation of a study. He's so wrong that the author of that study is testifying against him in the trial – on the side of the ACLU.

The good news is that Kobach must prove that there is "substantial" voter fraud in Kansas in order to justify his additional voting requirements to the National Voter Registration Act. Since 2000, Kobach’s office has identified only 129 noncitizens who registered to vote or attempted to register. In 2016 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit preliminarily found that the law caused "mass denial of a fundamental constitutional right."

The judge ordered a stay of Kobach's law allowing thousands of Kansans the opportunity to use their right to vote.

You might be wondering what's so difficult about showing a birth certificate.

Fortunately, I don't live in Kansas. I have my birth certificate but many people don't. In order to get an official, legally accepted copy of the original certificate, you have to go to the County Clerk's office of the county you were born in and pay whatever fee they require. I was born in Manila. If I didn't have my certificate, getting a copy would be difficult.

Fortunately, my parents were sophisticated and meticulous enough to have copies of the certificate which I now have in my possession. But many naturalized immigrants, especially those who had to leave their home countries hastily as refugees, might not have all the necessary documents.

Oh, by the way, you need that birth certificate and your naturalization papers to get a passport, the other acceptable proof of citizenship.

So, you can see the possible difficulties for people to provide proof. And if Kansas is going to ask proof of citizenship, will they ask everybody? Or, will they only ask people with an accent or people who are not white? The Kansas law is fraught full of Constitutional pitfalls.

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Ohio voter purge will hit Asian Americans

ASAM NEWS

IF YOU can’t beat them, get rid of them. That may be the philosophy of the Trump administration and the Republican party who are moving to purge the voter rolls in Ohio.

Poll after poll shows Asian/Americans and Latinx overwhelmingly vote Democratic.

They are also less likely to vote in an election.

In the swing state of Ohio, political leaders are “purportedly” purging the voting rolls of people who may have moved, but groups such as Asian Americans Advancing Justice and Latino Justice PRLDEF say in reality the practice targets voters who fail to vote.

The case has gone to the U.S. Supreme Court where oral arguments will be heard.

In a statement, People for the American Way says “Asian American and Latino registrants vote at lower rates than the rest of the U.S. population. Because of their lower voting rates, Asian/Americans and Latinos are more likely to be subject to Ohio’s Supplemental Process and purged from the registration lists than any other racial group.”

According to the Toledo Blade,a former Justice Department official says the support of the purge by the Trump White House is unprecedented.

“It’s been the long-standing position of the Department of Justice that it is unlawful under the National Voting Registration Act to start a voter purge process based on a failure to vote,” said Sam Bagenstos, former principal deputy assistant attorney general for civil rights who has served under both Democrats and Republicans.

“The Supplemental Process thus does not violate (the law) because it does not remove registrants solely for their initial failure to vote,” the Trump administration wrote in its brief filed in August. “Registrants are sent a notice because of that initial failure, but they are not removed unless they fail to respond and fail to vote for the additional period…”

The case is scheduled to be heard by the Supreme Court November 8.
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