The ACLU of Georgia today applauded the civil rights organizations involved in winning a settlement to help ensure that eligible Georgians will no longer be denied the right to register and vote as a result of data entry errors, typos and other database matching issues unrelated to applicants’ eligibility to vote. The settlement was the result of a challenge to Georgia’s exact-match voter registration verification scheme filed on behalf of Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta, the Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda and the Georgia State Conference of the NAACP by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Project Vote, Campaign Legal Center, Voting Rights Institute at the Georgetown University Law Center, along with the New York City office of Hughes Hubbard & Reed LLP.
“It’s encouraging to see so many groups working together to challenge these types of voter suppression schemes, and uphold the rights of all eligible voters,” said Andrea Young, Executive Director of the ACLU of Georgia. “This settlement is a victory for voting rights – and an important step toward ensuring that all Georgians who are eligible to vote have the opportunity to do so.”
The lawsuit alleged that Georgia’s “exact match” system of voter verification violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, denying eligible Georgians their fundamental right to vote. The results of this case restored more than 42,000 previously purged voters to their rolls.
The “exact match” system violated the rights of Georgians and targeted tens of thousands of applications from eligible voters, most frequently, those with African American, Latino, and Asian American ethnic backgrounds. In order to correct the flaw in the system, the Secretary of State has agreed to implement reforms to help ensure that Georgians who are eligible to vote will not be denied based on data entry errors.
For full details of the agreed upon settlement, click here.