But not all the news is quite so peachy, because even as the first ballots are being cast, the fate of 40,000 new voter registrations remains unresolved. The new voter registrations come from the New Georgia Project, which together with other groups registered roughly 250,000 new voters for this year’s election.
The voter registration drive focused on registering minority voters likely to vote for Democrats, so those are great numbers if you want to see Nunn pull off a stunning victory. But if you’re a Republican, the numbers are scary as hell—and among those Republicans is Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp, who as secretary of state is also Georgia’s top election official.
You can help protect voter rights by giving to our slate of Secretary of State candidates. If you haven’t done so already, now’s a great time! Voter protection matters.
You can register to vote by mail, and then get your friends and family to do so as well! Voting by mail is convenient, easy, and defeats the best of the GOP’s voter suppression efforts.
Once upon a time, Kemp was impressed with Democratic registration efforts and urged Republicans to do the same. But now that reality has sunk in—and favors Democrats—Kemp has changed his tune, using his authority as secretary of state to launch an investigation into whether the New Georgia Project is engaged in voter fraud. As you might guess, this was nothing more than a fishing expedition to harass a political rival, but now the question is whether Kemp and local election officials are slow-walking new voter registrations to boost the GOP’s chances.
Last week, allies of the New Georgia Project filed a lawsuit to force Kemp and elections officials to speed up processing of registration forms. With only three weeks to go before the election, there’s no excuse for delay—unless you’re more interested in helping the GOP win an election than in giving every citizen an equal opportunity to vote.
