Atlanta – The ACLU of Georgia has filed a motion to add Secretary of State Brian Kemp as a defendant to Hopkins v Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections, a lawsuit centered on elections officials’ attempt to remove illegally nearly 160,000 registered Georgia voters from the active voter rolls earlier this year.
Each of these registered Georgia voters moved within the same county in the last four years and filed an appropriate change of address with the U.S. Postal Service. Under state – and federal – law, their residential addresses should have been automatically updated on the voter rolls. Instead, election officials broke the law and sent out notices threatening to remove these Georgia voters from the active voter rolls if they did not respond in 30 days.
After the ACLU of Georgia filed a lawsuit in July 2017 against the Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections, it became clear that the Secretary of State was responsible for these violations.
“Secretary of State Brian Kemp is Georgia’s chief state election official, and it is his job to know and follow the law,” stated Sean J. Young, Legal Director for the ACLU of Georgia. “Yet, for nearly 160,000 Georgians, Secretary Kemp failed to protect their sacred, constitutional right to vote. We are bringing the Secretary into this lawsuit because it is time to hold him accountable.”
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