According to a new poll this Wednesday, the gubernatorial race og Georgia is appearing to be a deadlock when the elections is less than two weeks ahead.
Brian Kemp, the Republican Secretary of State is competing against Stacey Abrams, who is a Democratic former state House Minority Leader, the third candidate being Libertarian Ted Metz.
The race to the seat between Kemp and Abrams is a neck to neck one which a recent poll as per CNBC news stated that if Ted was not included then Brian is likely to get 49 percent of the votes whereas Stacey is not too far behind and tends to garner 47 percent of the votes.
In such a critical situation, when the competition is a tough one Kemp is apparently taking measures to get an edge over Stacey in an illicit manner. According to a new Associated Press Report, more than 53,000 registration applications of the voters are kept on hold, and a majority of these applications are of the African Americans.
The applications have been put on hold only because they failed to clear the state’s standard of “exact match”, under which even a minor discrepancy such as a missing letter between a voter’s registration and their driver’s license, social security or state ID cards will lead to cancellation of the right to vote.
The voting rights groups, Democratic candidate along with the supporters are blaming Kemp for the hold up, accusing him of taking illicit measures to gain an edge over Stacey as the election responsibilities lie in the hands of his office.
To defend himself, Kemp has stated that Stacey and other liberal groups are playing the political order only to bring accusations for him and thereby gain the same edge which he is been accused to possess through illicit means.
According to The Hill, a spokesperson from the office of the Republican Secretary of State, Brian Kemps told them that applications in question are being held under the law which was passed last year and under the law the information provided by the applicant should match exactly with what has been listed by the state’s Department of Driver Services and/or the Social Security Administration and is not an impromptu action taken by the office so the accusations are absolutely false and have not a trace of truth attached to it.
The legislation states that the applications of only those voters are passed or accepted whose registration details match with details of his or her Social Security Administration and/or the Driver’s license and if they fail to match then the application status is put as “pending.”
In case of an application being put a pending status, then a letter is sent to the applicant asking him/her to update the information within 26 months period of time so as to have the “exact match” as per the legislation. Applicants can either bring the identification papers at the polls or can also mail a copy of the same.
According to the US census the population of Georgia is approximately 32 percent black and the voting rights group have pointed out this racial makeup claiming that Kemp’s office has discriminated blacks and minority voters.
In an appearance on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show”, in August, Abrams has called this “a remarkable architect of voter suppression” by Kemp.
Ryan Mahoney, the spokesperson of Kemp’s campaign stated that voting has never been easy in their state and that Brian Kemp is fighting to protect the integrity of their elections and ensuring that only the legal citizens get to cast ballots.
In return, Kemp’s office has blamed the Abrams for the launch of voter registration project which is the root cause of the racial discrimination.
Source: Thehill.com, Cnbcnews
