Georgia Is Using Amateur Handwriting Analysis to Disenfranchise Minority Voters

[KelleyKramer]

My God, how many different ways are they canceling votes in Georgia?

Republicans really hate Democracy ....


Georgia Is Using Amateur Handwriting Analysis to Disenfranchise Minority Voters

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/10/brian-kemp-voter-mismatch-georgia-stolen-election.html


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Say you live in Georgia. You’re eager to vote in this year’s election—a tight race between Democrat Stacey Abrams and Republican Trump acolyte Brian Kemp—so you fill out an absentee ballot and mail it in. Then, days or weeks after the election, you receive a notice in the mail. The signature on your absentee ballot, it explains, looked different from the signature on your voter-registration card. So an election official threw out your ballot. There is nothing you can do. Your vote has been voided.

If Georgia’s signature-mismatch law remains in effect through the November election, this fate will befall thousands of would-be voters. The statute directs elections officials to apply amateur handwriting analysis to voters’ signatures and reject any potential “mismatch.” Nearly 500 ballots in Gwinnett County alone have already been rejected for mismatch, a disproportionate number of them cast by minority voters. Now the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia is suing, demanding that the state give all citizens an opportunity to cure ballots rejected for mismatch. Its suit will help determine how successfully Georgia will suppress minority votes in the upcoming race.


Signature-mismatch laws are a scourge of American elections. The very premise makes no sense: In a similar lawsuit filed in New Hampshire, a forensic document examiner testified that effective signature comparison requires 10 signature samples “at a minimum” to account for variability. Even then, experts may struggle to verify a signature, because our signatures often change over time. Voters who are disabled or elderly, or are nonnative English speakers, are especially likely to have variation between signatures. That’s one reason why New Hampshire’s mismatch law disproportionately impacted seniors, California’s disproportionately impacts first-generation Asian Americans, and Florida’s disproportionately impacts Hispanics.

But there’s likely something more insidious going on here too. The extreme racial disparities among those affected by mismatch laws may also reflect the broad discretion that election officials have to toss ballots. In states with stringent mismatch rules, a handful of election officials are frequently responsible for the vast majority of ballots voided for mismatch. And those officials routinely work in counties with large minority communities.


More on the link-
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/10/brian-kemp-voter-mismatch-georgia-stolen-election.html


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[chillfactor]

1. The recons can cheat all they want....

but Stacey will win just the same...plenty of white voters voting for her as well.

[applegrove]

2. That's a lot of regulating for the party that hates regulations. I wonder

how expensive it is to peruse? Isn't that taxpayers money to regulate people out of their freedom to vote?

[sakabatou]

3. Gaming the system

[Lochloosa]

4. I have three different signatures and have no idea which I used...

To sign my voter registration with. I'll be voting in person.