Match Game 2018: Missing Hyphens Could Complicate Voter Registration in Georgia

[Image via smwright]

With the 2018 elections approaching – featuring high-profile fights for control of Congress and numerous key state races – we are already starting to see high interest in voting rules, including new match requirements in Georgia that could complicate voter registration for voters using paper forms. US News and World Report has more:

Driver’s license in one hand, she carefully writes her license number in the box provided, her first name, last name, address, her eyes switching from license to the paper form and back again to ensure every last detail, down to hyphens and suffixes, is absolutely correct.

Diaz, and the voting rights activists holding a voter registration drive at South Cobb High School in northern Atlanta, know why it is so important not to make an error.

A law passed by the Republican-controlled Georgia state legislature last year requires that all of the letters and numbers of the applicant’s name, date of birth, driver’s license number and last four digits of their Social Security number exactly match the same letters and numbers in the motor vehicle department or Social Security databases.

The tiniest discrepancy on a registration form places them on a “pending” voter list that could deter people from voting. A Reuters analysis of Georgia’s pending voter list, obtained through a public records request, found that black voters landed on the list at a far higher rate than white voters even though a majority of Georgia’s voters are white.

Both voting rights activists and Georgia’s state government say the reason for this is that blacks more frequently fill out paper forms than whites, who are more likely to do them online. Paper forms are more prone to human error, both sides agree. But they disagree on whether the errors are made by those filling out the forms or officials processing the forms.

Republicans say the aim of the “exact match” law is to prevent voter fraud. Voting rights groups, however, object to an inadvertent error creating an obstacle to a person’s fundamental right to vote.

Part of the issue is that the “perfect match” was standard procedure that ended up being written into law after a court struck it down last year:

The Democratic Party has said that changes to voting laws in Republican-controlled states are part of a concerted effort to reduce turnout among particular groups of voters on election day. Republicans deny that the voting laws are discriminatory and say they are intended to reduce fraudulent votes.

In Georgia, exact match was state policy for several years. The state was sued over the policy and settled the case in February 2017. Later in the year the Republican-controlled statehouse made it law, with some changes. That new law will be in effect for the first time in statewide elections this November.

Another issue is whether – and how – voters are notified that their record needs correcting:

Under the new law, voters placed on the list do have 26 months to rectify any error, and if they present a valid ID card at a polling place, they can vote. But voting activists say many people may not realize they are on the pending list in the first place.

When a voter on a pending list checks their personal voter page on the Georgia Secretary of State’s website, it tells them to check their status with county officials. Nowhere does it inform the voter that they have been placed in pending status.

Voting groups say some minority voters don’t have access to the state’s website as they do not own computers. Additionally, based on past experiences with exact match, they say temporary poll workers sometimes do not know how to fix errors or what pending status actually means…

In a state where roughly 31 percent of residents are African American, nearly 72 percent of those on that list were African American. Just under 10 percent of the people on the list were white although, according to 2016 U.S. Census data, 54 percent of Georgia’s population are white non-Hispanics.

Voting rights groups say based on their experience of previous elections, the practice of exact match sows confusion, suppressing turnout, and that overstretched county workers are more likely to add a voter to a pending list to save time and meet deadlines.

Everyone seems to agree that the major problem is the continued reliance on paper registrations, though there is (predictable) disagreement as to whether errors are happening before or after registrations are submitted:

Brian Kemp, Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, manages the state’s elections. He argues the state’s exact-match law is fair. Candice Broce, a spokesperson for Kemp, said more blacks end up on the pending voter list than whites because black voters used paper registrations more often than white voters…

Broce blamed voter registration groups such as the New Georgia Project, which held the registration drive at Diaz’s high school, for registering voters predominately with paper forms, and then turning in “incomplete, illegible, or fraudulent forms,” which skews the data. 

Broce added there was no significant racial disparity in voters landing on the pending list when they registered online. She said the issue “is limited to paper applications.”

Nse Ufot, executive director of New Georgia Project, called Broce’s comments “ridiculous” and said the problem was most likely caused by human error during the state’s transcription of the data on the paper forms to a computer. Errors occur because the counties, who record registrations, are short-staffed, workers are improperly trained, and often in a hurry to make election deadlines, she said.

You can bet we’ll hear a lot more about this given who’s on the ballot this fall: