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posted by martyb on Tuesday October 23 2018, @10:03PM   Printer-friendly
from the conflict-of-interest-much? dept.

The Guardian reports:

Georgia secretary of state and gubernatorial candidate Brian Kemp improperly purged more than 340,000 voters from the state's registration rolls, an investigation charges.

Greg Palast, a journalist and the director of the Palast Investigative Fund, said an analysis he commissioned found 340,134 voters were removed from the rolls on the grounds that they had moved - but they actually still live at the address where they are registered.

"Their registration is cancelled. Not pending, not inactive – cancelled. If they show up to vote on 6 November, they will not be allowed to vote. That's wrong," Palast told reporters on a call on Friday. "We can prove they're still there. They should be allowed to vote."

[...] Palast and the Georgia Coalition for the People's Agenda filed a lawsuit against Kemp on Friday to force him to release additional records related to the state's removal of voters.

Under Georgia procedures, registered voters who have not cast ballots for three years are sent a notice asking them to confirm they still live at their address. If they don't return it, they are marked inactive. If they don't vote for two more general elections after that, they are removed from the rolls.


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  • (Score: 2) by RandomFactor on Tuesday October 23 2018, @10:56PM (3 children)

    by RandomFactor (3682) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday October 23 2018, @10:56PM (#752626) Journal

    While I understand the perspective, this brings in a whole different issue where bad actors have global scope across the country.
    .
    Letting states do things reduces the scope of said bad actors dramatically and allows a mechanism of redress to the federal level.
    .
    Not saying it doesn't still suck, but, it's better.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 23 2018, @11:27PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 23 2018, @11:27PM (#752648)

    Different AC. Citizenship should automatically make one eligible for voting. Instead of precincts keeping track of registered voters, they should instead keep track of citizens residing within their district. We already have a system of state-level ID (which is mutually exclusive, at least in any state I've held a driver's license in) that could automatically generate the list of citizen residing in each district. A seemingly independent system of voter registration is redundant.

    This would leave out some people who have recently moved, but we should ensure that it is trivial (no cost, reduce other accessibility concerns such as hours of operation and travel to the DMV or where ever) to update one's legal address. No system will be absolutely perfect but there is ample room for improvement here. One possible solution is national absentee voting, but that has other conundrums.

    • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday October 24 2018, @12:48AM

      by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Wednesday October 24 2018, @12:48AM (#752691) Homepage Journal

      Suppose I don't want a state ID? Granted it's quite a bit more paranoid, anti-government, anarchistic than I am but it's a legitimate question anyway. I genuinely do not want the state governments building up a database of all their citizens, complete with thumbprint and photo.

      Registering to vote is trivial anyway. Par for all the times I've registered is about five minutes after I arrive to register. And if the black folks that Democrats seem to think aren't mentally capable of getting a state ID for themselves can manage it, it must be pretty easy.

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    • (Score: 2) by RandomFactor on Wednesday October 24 2018, @12:58AM

      by RandomFactor (3682) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday October 24 2018, @12:58AM (#752699) Journal

      Citizenship should automatically make one eligible for voting once

      .
      Fixed :-)
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      Registration serves several purposes.
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      1) Serves to ensure the voter votes where they live
      2) Allows election authorities to send appropriate materials to the voter (e.g. correct ballots in states with closed primaries)
      3) is one method of reducing voter fraud (e.g. voting multiple times)
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      It is archaic and has its own flaws and it seems like we could implement a better method to handle these.
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      So how do we eliminate it without making voter fraud easier? (And no, trusting people is NOT an option, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wc0SKvLNdgs [youtube.com] )

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