However, in June of this year, the Supreme Court said election officials can purge voters if they miss elections and don't return that postcard, but only if the failure to return the postcard is a reasonable indication the voter has moved.
Kemp has steadfastly refused to look at evidence that would show a voter has not moved. (Heck, Kemp didn't even wonder why the purged voters paid Georgia taxes if they had left the state.)
So, my foundation, the Palast Investigative Fund, did the work for him, having the experts review the list name by name.
Warning: In addition to the 340,134 who never moved from their original registration addresses, Kemp wrongly purged thousands more who did move, but within their county, say, from one side of Savannah to another. (If you move within your county -- you need not re-register; you should not be purged.)
Another issue: use of Crosscheck, a list of voters who supposedly are registered in another Georgia and another state -- evidence they've moved. In Truthout and Rolling Stone I've written extensively about this racially biased and factually challenged list created for Kemp by Kris Kobach of Kansas. (Kobach is another GOP secretary of state running for governor.) Despite Kemp's denial, our experts found that 108,000 Georgia voters were also found on the Crosscheck list. Worse, careful review of post office files show 106,000 of these never left the state -- yet lost their right to vote because of these supposed moves.
Some did move, but into Georgia -- a trick uncovered by none other than Stacey Abrams, Kemp's opponent, who found that error on the Crosscheck list which I showed her for comment.
One Savannah voter who was purged was targeted by Crosscheck for supposedly moving to Illinois. Mr. Mitchell (I'm withholding his first name*) called me upset because he'd actually moved from Illinois to Georgia more than a decade ago.
This one story has a happy ending. We'd listed all purged voters at GregPalast.com two days before close of registration -- and Mr. Mitchell re-registered just in time.
Jim Crow Is in the Cards
Another expert on our team, Mark Swedlund, is not surprised the postcard trick captures Black and poor voters disproportionately. "It doesn't shock me at all. Response rates are lower among people of color, in particular among African-American renters," he said.
Swedlund, who advises companies like American Express and eBay about mailing techniques, made clear that demanding that voters send back a postcard to prove they haven't moved is absurd.
"Postcards are the weakest form of mailers to get a response," Swedlund said. "If you use that as a basis for determining whether somebody moved or not, you would be making a very big mistake."
Mr. Mitchell saved his registration, but hundreds of thousands of voters will only find out they've been purged when they attempt to vote on November 6. They will be mollified with a "provisional" ballot. But it won't be counted.
In Georgia, if you were removed from the rolls, even wrongly, your vote won't count. Call it Kemp's rules.
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