ATLANTA — “Outside agitators.”
Haven’t heard that since growing up here when that label was applied to folks who came South to help register people to vote. Back then the pols were afraid of changing times brought on by the Voting Rights Act. Decades later, the Republican candidate for Georgia governor is running scared again. In a state where he should be way ahead based on past elections, Brian Kemp is in a virtual tie with Stacey Abrams, not only a Democrat, but a black woman to boot.
The Associated Press reported Kemp suspended voter registration applications of 53,000 Georgians, more than two-thirds of them black. He can do that because as Secretary of State he also oversees elections including this one in which he is a candidate. Kemp is the 3rd Georgia Secretary of State in recent history to run for governor, but the only one who has not resigned from office. Despite the obvious conflict of interest, Kemp refuses to step aside as elections chief, instead issuing this statement:
“Despite what you hear or read, the numbers are clear. While outside agitators disparage this office and falsely attack us, we have kept our heads down and remained focused on ensuring secure, accessible, and fair elections for all voters.” That puts Kemp in league with fellow Georgian Lester Maddox and George Wallace from next door in Alabama, both of whom cursed “outside agitators.”
People whose registration has been put aside need not be discouraged. They usually can vote with a regular ballot. More on that later.
OUTSIDE AGITATORS
“The term ‘outside agitators’ has a long and complicated history in Southern politics. It was first used by opponents of labor unions back in the 1930s and ’40s, but it was quickly also applied to any kinds of groups that were advocating for greater civil rights and legal protections for African-Americans,” said Joseph Crespino, professor of 20th Century U.S. History and chair of the History Department at Emory University in Atlanta. “So it became common from 1930s and ’40s onward for Southern politicians to label anybody who wanted to change the status quo in Southern politics as ‘outside agitators’ and to dismiss movements for civil rights as being instigated by people from the outside,” Crespino told Yahoo News.
Kemp, whose ads showed him in a truck, ready to round up illegals and with a long gun interrogating a young man interested in dating his daughter, apparently is running on the success he had as Secretary of State. Let’s review:
A private researcher, months before the 2016 election, told Kemp voting system software and documents of 6 million Georgians were “completely open” and vulnerable to manipulation. Homeland Security in 2016 wanted to label voting systems “critical infrastructure” to enable states to get cybersecurity assistance. Kemp rejected that, calling it federal overreach. Later, Special Counsel Robert Mueller indicted Russian intelligence officers saying they “visited the websites of certain counties in Georgia, Iowa and Florida to identify vulnerabilities.” Kemp’s office released a statement saying the system was never hacked or targeted according to President Trump and the TSA. Kemp said allegations to the contrary are “fake news.”
A lawsuit was filed and days later technicians erased the hard drives of the server in question. Charles Amlaner, a former vice president for research at Kennesaw State University, who signed some of the KSU’s contracts with Kemp’s office, said Kemp didn’t include data security specifications in the election-system contracts, although most government contracts involving sensitive data did. When the contract with KSU ended, Kemp’s office offered a job to the director of the school’s Center for Election Systems.
KEMP’S ARMED AGENTS
In his first full year in office, 2010, Kemp sent armed agents door to door in black neighborhoods in Brooks County near the Florida border after a big “get-out-the-vote drive that led to the first majority black school board. Kemp brought criminal charges against 12 local blacks who had taken part in the drive. Many were elected to the school board. They were charged with more than 100 election law violations. They could have faced more than 1,000 combined years in prison. One activist, Lula Smart of Quitman, faced 32 felony counts that could have carried more than 100 years in prison, largely for charges of carrying envelopes containing completed absentee ballots to the mailbox for voters. None of the charged held up. No convictions. No plea deals. They were either acquitted or charges were dropped. Georgia’s attorney general was forced to admit none of the actions mentioned in the charges were illegal.
Damage was done, however. Quitman resident Sandra Cody told a reporter she and another activist were removed from their longtime Head Start teaching jobs because of pending voting charges. “They said we’re not supposed to be around children,” Cody said, “because we have this on our record.”
Later, Kemp told a newspaper that his elections director, Linda Ford, was resigning at his request because of a “technical error” that caused nearly 8,000 voters to be improperly removed from the rolls.
Kemp also is behind Georgia’s notorious “exact match” verification policy. When voter applications are submitted, the data is compared against Social Security or Driver’s Services records and an exact match is required under a 2017 state law. If a period or letter or space is out of place — anything no matter how trivial or insignificant — the pending applications go into Kemp’s nether regions which currently hold about 53,000 rejections. For instance, if your name is Ingle and the clerk types in Ingel, it doesn’t match. If you live at Riverside Rd. but the clerk leaves off the period after Rd it doesn’t match. If you reside at Suite 206 but your registration says Ste. 206, it doesn’t match. Janice Williger-Smith is not the same as Janice Williger Smith. Voters have 26 months to clear up discrepancies or be purged from the rolls.
Eight years ago Kemp was told this discriminates and is open to clerical error, but Kemp went ahead.
“What Georgia is doing is denying people the ability to make it onto the registration rolls at the onset, which is what’s so problematic about this matching program,” said Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, one of six organizations suing Kemp.
Kemp blames the victims, especially opponent Stacey Abrams’ New Georgia Project which has worked for five years to get 800,000 people registered. His office accused Abrams of being sloppy — without any proof. About 32 percent of Georgia’s population is black, but 70 percent of Kemp’s suspended voters are.
The system, Abrams said, is “designed to scare people out of voting” and make it harder to vote for those who are “willing to push through.”
“He’s eroding the public trust in the system because 53,000 people have been told, ‘You may be able to vote, you may not,'” she said.
VOTERS PURGED
Since 2012, Kemp has purged 1.4 million from the Georgia voter rolls, staying it was housekeeping, removing the dead, people who moved etc. There are almost no legitimate claims of voter fraud when someone pretends to be someone else.
Georgia is not the only state where suspicious and discriminatory voter registration rules were put in place after 2013 when the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act of 1965 which came about after a peaceful march across an Alabama bridge let by now-Congressman John Lewis was attacked by George Wallace’s Alabama state troopers. Marchers were called “outside agitators.” Since 2013, 1,200 polling places nationwide have closed. Georgia is, however, the only state this cycle where a candidate for governor is also in charge of election supervision and has had questionable involvement with voter lists.
Early voting in Georgia runs from Oct. 15 to Nov. 2. If you vote early and there is a problem, there is time to resolve it before Election Day, Nov. 6. Those 53,000 voters on Kemp’s sidelined list can still vote, even on Nov. 6, at polling places. This was not his original plan, Kemp caved after a federal lawsuit. ACLU of Georgia: “All voters who have pending registration applications can still cast a regular ballot by presenting photo identification.” Voting early at a registrar’s office is a better way because there are some issues that can’t be resolved at polling places. Voters who run into those difficult issues can use a provisional ballot with three days to clear up any issue.
Traditionally in presidential years, Georgians vote in huge numbers via early voting. Keep an eye on that for a gauge on voter enthusiasm during this mid-term. Early voting accounted for 37 percent of turnout four years ago. Almost twice as many absentee ballots have been mailed to Georgia election officials so far compared to the same point before midterm elections in 2014.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution joined the national Electionland project to monitor voter problems. Electionland advises:
You can sign up to participate and report tips through your phone or computer:
- Send a text message with the word “VOTE” or “VOTA” (for Spanish language) to 81380
- Use Facebook Messenger by visiting m.me/electionland.
- Send a Tweet to @electionland.
- Use WhatsApp by sending the word “VOTE” or “VOTA” (for Spanish language) to 1-850-909-8683.
If you encounter problems, you also can call the national Election Protection Hotline: Dial 866-OurVote or 866-687-8683.
To check on your registration go to Vote.Org. on the Internet.
(Bob Ingle is a New York Times Best Selling Author, TV and Radio news analyst, and award-winning journalist who grew up in Atlanta.)
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