FREUDIAN SLIP: Georgia GOP Governor Kemp admits that voter suppression isn’t about fraud
Governor Brian Kemp (R-GA) expressed his “frustration” with the results of the 2020 election, which he not so vaguely blames on the Democrats for, in the Republican incumbent’s own words: “registering all these minority voters.” No stranger to trying to suppress the votes of those who don’t cast one in his, or his party’s, favor, Kemp let us know how he really feels.
Gov. Brian Kemp has expressed his frustration with Democrats’ efforts “registering all these minority voters.”
Kemp also admitted onstage during a 2022 GOP Gov debate that he signed SB 202 into law because he was frustrated with Democrats winning in 2020. pic.twitter.com/SNOGqMItDN
— Max Flugrath (@MaxFlugrath) October 5, 2022
Recent reports of over 37,500 challenges in Georgia’s Gwinnett County – the most diverse in the state – with just under a month until the November election, shined a light on the Governor’s history of voter suppression tactics.
In 2021, Gov. Kemp signed the state’s restrictive voting bill SB 202 into law. According to MSNBC:
“Republican policymakers in Georgia, fueled by the Big Lie, got to work on a voter-suppression package — Senate Bill 202 — that the state clearly did not need, but which Kemp signed anyway. As regular readers may recall, the law made it harder to cast ballots through drop boxes, while simultaneously making it more difficult to cast absentee ballots. GOP officials also made it illegal to bring water to voters forced to wait in long lines.”
Kemp himself admitted the new legislation has little to do with ex-President Donald Trump’s claims of voter fraud.
“A lot of this bill is dealing with the mechanics of the election. It has nothing to do with potential fraud or not,” he said.
In 2018, a federal lawsuit alleged that Kemp – during his role as Secretary of State illegally suppressed hundreds of thousands of votes between 2016 and 2018 – and a federal judge agreed. According to local news affiliate 11 Alive:
“Kemp, in his role as secretary of state, was accused of using a racially-biased methodology for removing as many as 700,000 legitimate voters from the state’s voter rolls during a period between 2016 and 2018.”
With his actions discovered by Rolling Stone journalist Greg Palast while doing research for a piece, Kemp denied any wrongdoing, releasing a statement refuting the research behind the lawsuit. He insisted that no voters had been removed from the state’s rolls as a result of any sort of ‘purge list,’ as claimed by Palast.
“Kemp’s office is accused of using a racially-biased methodology for removing as many as 700,000 legitimate voters from the state’s voter rolls over the past two years.” – 11 Alive
Asserting that his office didn’t use the “Crosscheck” system – a system that some consider to be a discriminatory and race-based algorithm that can be used to remove legally registered voters — Judge Ross had a contrary view.
“The Court disagrees,” Ross said in her summary, “finding sufficient evidence in the record that would cast a genuine dispute as to the material facts on this issue.”
In her conclusion, the judge said she is considering a summary judgment finding against Kemp and considering allowing full access to the 2016 and 2017 Crosscheck lists to Palast and Butler.
“The Court now considers entering summary judgment in favor of the Plaintiffs sua sponte (of its own accord) pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 56(f). As such, the Court PLACES Defendant on notice that it is considering entering summary judgment in favor of Plaintiff,” Ross wrote.
During Brian Kemp’s first round against the Democratic candidate Stacey Abrams – who would be the first African-American female governor of any state – rumors of voter roll purges dogged the Republican’s campaign. Multiple lawsuits have also charged that Kemp blocked the registrations of 50,000 would-be voters — 80% of them black, Latino, or Asian — because of minor discrepancies in the spelling or spacing of their names. Another suit targeted the state’s most diverse county after it rejected an unusually large number of absentee ballots, The Guardian reported.
Oh my goodness watch this pic.twitter.com/JO2s52o8xN
— Ben Wexler (@mrbenwexler) August 31, 2022
