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Georgia County Rejects Nearly 1 in 10 Mail-In Ballots

HeadlineOct 16, 2018

In Georgia, where early voting in the November midterm election is already underway, election officials in Gwinnett County outside of Atlanta have rejected far more absentee ballots than any other county in the state, with nearly one out of 10 mail-in ballots thrown out. The move has alarmed voting rights groups who note that more than 60 percent of the county’s residents are Latino, black or Asian. State officials say the ballots were rejected because of allegedly mismatched signatures, incomplete forms or missing residential addresses. This comes as Georgia’s African-American Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams has called on her Republican opponent to step down from his position as secretary of state following an Associated Press report alleging voter suppression ahead of the election. Abrams and civil rights groups have accused Brian Kemp of using minor discrepancies in voters’ registrations and ID cards to bar them from casting a ballot, a system that has resulted in 53,000 voter applications being put on hold. Seven out of 10 of the stalled applications are for African-American voters. After headlines, we’ll spend the rest of the hour on Republican-led voter suppression efforts ahead of the midterm elections.

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