We’ve kept a close eye on developments in Georgia, home to very competitive U.S. Senate and gubernatorial races, where civil-rights groups believe state officials are slow-walking tens of thousands of voter-registration forms. A lawsuit was filed on Friday, Oct. 10, with voting-rights advocates looking for a court order on processing pending forms.
As the Associated Press reported, with time running out, state officials appear to have prevailed.
Days before the midterm elections, a state judge declined Tuesday to act in a dispute over 56,000 voter registration applications in one of the nation’s most politically charged states. […]Fulton County Judge Christopher Brasher ruled Tuesday that the plaintiffs failed to prove that election authorities haven’t followed the law, even if the would-be voters have yet to show up on the state’s official list of eligible electors.Republican Secretary of State Brian Kemp and authorities in several majority Democratic counties say they are still processing the applications. And they’ve argued that any citizen can cast a provisional ballot, a contention the plaintiffs mock as insufficient.
The civil-rights groups responsible for the case are, not surprisingly, considering an appeal, though with Election Day now just six days away, time is obviously limited.
For those who haven’t followed the controversy, voter-suppression efforts have been problematic in Georgia. Secretary of State Brian Kemp (R), Georgia’s top elections official, was recorded over the summer expressing concern, for example, about Democrats “registering all these minority voters that are out there.” Kemp also subpoenaed the New Georgia Project, which happens to be the driving force behind the state’s largest voter-registration campaign, for reasons that appear quite dubious.
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Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."