A coalition of civil rights groups may seek emergency relief to block Georgia’s controversial “exact match” voter registration rules in time for next month’s midterm elections, Bryan Sells, an attorney for the coalition, told ABC News on Monday.
In a federal lawsuit filed on Thursday, the coalition claimed that a law implemented by Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp put over 50,000 new voter registration applications on hold because the registration forms did not exactly match data on file with government agencies.Under the new law, even a missed hyphen or a nickname inconsistency can stall an application.
The plaintiffs called the law discriminatory, claiming that according to a preliminary review by the Georgia secretary of state’s office, 80 percent of stalled applications were from African-Americans, Latinos and Asian-Americans, and only 9.8 percent were submitted by applicants identifying as White.