Stacey Abrams: Voter Suppression GA's Brian Kemp

MENU POLITICS & ELECTIONS Four Ways Georgia Is Suppressing Voters as Early Voting Begins Daveta Mahoney casts her ballot during a special election in Georgia's 6th Congressional District at St. Bede's Episcopal Church on June 20, 2017, in Tucker, Georgia. JOE RAEDLE / GETTY IMAGES BY Jonathan Brater & Rebecca Ayala, Brennan Center for Justice PUBLISHED October 15, 2018 SHARE Reports that Georgia is keeping 53,000 voter registrations on hold because of minor discrepancies have received widespread attention since last Monday. But in fact, the state has recently adopted a range of controversial voting practices. The combined effect is to put voters — especially racial minorities — at risk of disenfranchisement as the state’s hotly contested governor’s race approaches. Early voting begins today. Below is a summary of the four major voting issues that have contributed to problems in the Peach State. “Exact Match” Policy: In 2017, Georgia passed legislation requiring that information on voter registration forms match exactly with existing state records. Even a single digit or a misplaced hyphen could be enough to prevent registration and instead put the application on “pending” status. Georgia previously had a different version of this exact match process but agreed in 2017 to discontinue the practice after civil rights groups brought suit — only to reinstate a different version of exact match later that year.