The state of Georgia has settled [NAACP press release, PDF] a lawsuit against Secretary of State Brian Kemp over a voter registration law that would reject any application that did not exactly match personal identification information in state and federal databases. As part of the settlement, Georgia will no longer reject voter applications for not exactly matching the databases. Advocacy groups have criticized the law, stating that it disproportionally impacted minority voters. Between 2013 and 2016, a total of 34,874 voter applications were denied for having mismatched information. “Of those, black applicants were eight times more likely to fail the state’s verification process than white applicants, and Latinos and Asian-Americans were six times more likely to fail, according to the suit.” Candice Broce, Brian Kemp’s spokeswoman, had stated that the settlement was done at the advice of the Attorney General’s office in order to avoid further expenses due to litigation. The lawsuit was originally filed by the Georgia NAACP, the Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda, and Asian Americans Advancing Justice – Atlanta.

The lawsuit was originally filed [JURIST report] in September. It is one of many legal challenges to voter registration throughout the United States. In November the NAACP filed [JURIST report] a lawsuit in North Carolina over the cancellation of thousands of voter registrations prior to the presidential election. In October the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit [official website] granted a stay [JURIST report] on the preliminary injunction that had halted Michigan’s ban on taking ballot selfies. Also in October, a New York law prohibiting a person from showing the contents of her prepared voting ballot was challenged as unconstitutional [JURIST report] by state voters for violating their First Amendment rights. The complaint alleges that the law infringes on voters’ freedom of speech and freedom of expression under the US Constitution as well as the New York state Constitution. In September similar laws banning the ballot selfie have been rejected in Michigan and New Hampshire [JURIST report].