Georgia: “Missing hyphens will make it hard for some people to vote in U.S. election”

Reuters:

The tiniest discrepancy on a registration form places them on a “pending” voter list. 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 the tiniest, inadvertent error creating an obstacle to a person’s fundamental right to vote.

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