107,000 Georgia Residents Were Removed From Voting Rolls For This...

Thousands Of Georgia Voters Are Ineligible To Vote Due To This Loophole

This is absolutely insane…but are we really that surprised?

As election day continues to creep up on us, a whopping 107,000 Georgia residents have apparently lost their right to vote simply for not voting in past elections.

An APM Reports analysis stated that many of the 107,000 who were cut from voter rolls may not even realize that they are no longer eligible to vote in the highly contested Nov. 6 midterm elections in Georgia–where most eyes are on the gubernatorial race between Democrat Stacey Abrams and Republican (and current Secretary of State) Brian Kemp.

These cuts apparently occurred sometime in late July 2017, where more than half a million people were purged from the voter rolls. Kemp, whose office oversees elections (which…seems legit right?), oversaw the removals eight months after he cast his bid for governor, according to the report.

Unfortunately, these voter roll purges aren’t exactly anything new. Voters are often removed from lists if they happen to have moved, died, or gone to prison; Federal law requires that states cut ineligible citizens from voter rolls.

But in states like Georgia in particular, there is a strict “use it or lose it” policy that basically insists that citizens vote, otherwise the perfectly eligible voters will lose that right.

APRM says about the removal of thousands of voters:

“Election officials say that they’re trying to keep voter registration lists accurate and prevent voter fraud. They consider it safe to assume that people who don’t vote in multiple elections, or return confirmation notices, have moved.”

“‘We’re following the process,’ Kemp said in a recent interview with public radio station WABE in Atlanta, arguing his office had not only complied with state and federal law but was registering more voters than ever. “I’m very proud of my record on making sure we have secure, accessible and fair elections.’”

This is just another way that Brian Kemp has been accused of voter suppression tactics.

Earlier this month, Kemp was accused of sitting on over 53,000 voter registrations. According to his office, the registrations sitting in his office failed to meet Georgia’s “exact match” registration verification process, where a detail as innocuous as a missing hyphen in a name can trigger the stalling of a voter’s registration.