Citing a decline in the number of persons registering to vote at Georgia public assistance offices since the NVRA first took effect in the mid-1990s, a coalition including Project Vote and the NAACP sued the state, alleging widespread violations of Section 7 of the National Voter Registration Act. Georgia officials announced Thursday that they have settled a lawsuit charging that welfare applicants weren’t given access to voter-registration materials as required by federal law. But Secretary of State Brian Kemp isn’t happy about it. His office issued a statement headlined “Secretary of State Kemp condemns U.S. Department of Justice-Acorn coordination behind ludicrous voter-registration lawsuit.” In the settlement, Kemp agreed to ensure the Department of Human Services offers the forms and will issue reports of how many go out to the coalition that sued. The DOJ filed a “statement of interest” in the case, indicating that the agency agreed with the plaintiffs’ position. Interestingly, documents show that the DOJ has recently coordinated similar lawsuits with Project Vote in Missouri, Ohio, Indiana, New Mexico, Rhode Island and Louisiana. and quotes Secretary Kemp: “The court’s decision to ignore the NVRA’s notice requirements and expand the scope of the law will cost Georgia taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars to comply with outdated and unneeded federal voter registration mandates and in attorney’s fees paid to venue-shopping interest groups. Despite allegations of widespread violations by DHS, it is apparent that this was not a lawsuit aimed at promoting increased voter registration as seen by the more than 5.8 million registered voters in the state as of April 1st [almost 80% of Georgia’s Voting Age Population of 7.3 million].
The ACORN-affiliated Project Vote filed the suit along with the Georgia State Conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Coalition for the Peoples’ Agenda and others. It accused the state of failing to supply voter-registration forms every time a person applies for welfare or re-certifies eligibility or changes an address, either in person, by telephone or over the Internet.
“The provisions of the NVRA at issue in this lawsuit are clearly being misconstrued by federal courts, as evidenced by this court’s actions and the decision this week by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that Arizona’s proof of citizenship requirement to register to vote violates the NVRA. Based on these decisions, it is clear that Congress should immediately reexamine and clarify the NVRA so states are no longer required to duplicate voter registration efforts, and allow states to ensure that only U.S. citizens can register to vote.”