Missing hyphens will make it hard for some people to vote in U.S. election

FILE PHOTO: South Cobb High School senior Fabiola Diaz, 18, carefully double-checks the details on her driver's license as she registers to vote during a registration drive by voting rights group New Project Georgia in Austell, Georgia, U.S. February 6, 2018. Picture taken February 6, 2018. REUTERS/Chris Aluka Berry

By Tim Reid and Grant Smith

ATLANTA/NEW YORK (Reuters) – Fabiola Diaz, 18, sits in the food court of her Georgia high school and meticulously fills out a U.S. voter registration form.

Driver’s license in one hand, she carefully writes her license number in the box provided, her first name, last name, address, her eyes switching from license to the paper form and back again to ensure every last detail, down to hyphens and suffixes, is absolutely correct.

Diaz, and the voting rights activists holding a voter registration drive at South Cobb High School in northern Atlanta, know why it is so important not to make an error.

A law passed by the Republican-controlled Georgia state legislature last year requires that all of the letters and numbers of the applicant’s name, date of birth, driver’s license number and last four digits of their Social Security number exactly match the same letters and numbers in the motor vehicle department or Social Security databases.

The tiniest discrepancy on a registration form places them on a “pending” voter list. A Reuters analysis of Georgia’s pending voter list, obtained through a public records request, found that black voters landed on the list at a far higher rate than white voters even though a majority of Georgia’s voters are white.

Both voting rights activists and Georgia’s state government say the reason for this is that blacks more frequently fill out paper ballots than whites, who are more likely to do them online. Paper ballots are more prone to human error, both sides agree. But they disagree on whether the errors are made by those filling out the forms or officials processing the forms.

Democrats and voting rights groups say the “exact match” law could make the difference in a tight congressional election, like the one in Georgia’s 6th congressional district in November, as blacks tend to vote for the Democratic Party. If Democrats can gain 24 seats they will be able to win control of the U.S. House of Representatives and block President Donald Trump’s legislative agenda.

A few thousand votes could decide the race in the 6th district. In a special election there last year, Republican Karen Handel defeated Democrat Jon Ossoff by just over 9,000 votes, out of about 260,000 cast. Trump won the northern Atlanta district by 1 percent of the vote in 2016.

DISPARITY

The Democratic Party has said that changes to voting laws in Republican-controlled states are part of a concerted effort to reduce turnout among particular groups of voters on election day. Republicans deny that the voting laws are discriminatory and say they are intended to reduce fraudulent votes.

In Georgia, exact match was state policy for several years. The state was sued over the policy and settled the case in February 2017. Later in the year the Republican-controlled statehouse made it law, with some changes. That new law will be in effect for the first time in statewide elections this November.

Ohio and Florida are the only other states to implement exact match provisions since 2008, according to the non-partisan Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, which advocates for voting rights and fair elections.

More than 82 percent of the roughly 56,000 voter registrants given “pending” voter status in Georgia between August 2013 and February 2018 were there because they had fallen foul of the exact match policy, according to state data reviewed by Reuters. (Graphic https://tmsnrt.rs/2H9ZFZ7)

In a state where roughly 31 percent of residents are African American, nearly 72 percent of those on that list were African American. Just under 10 percent of the people on the list were white although, according to 2016 U.S. Census data, 54 percent of Georgia’s population are white non-Hispanics.

Voting rights groups say based on their experience of previous elections, the practice of exact match sows confusion, suppressing turnout, and that overstretched county workers are more likely to add a voter to a pending list to save time and meet deadlines.

Brian Kemp, Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, manages the state’s elections. He argues the state’s exact-match law is fair. Candice Broce, a spokesperson for Kemp, said more blacks end up on the pending voter list than whites because black voters used paper registrations more often than white voters.

Georgia contends that more than twice as many black residents registered to vote by paper than did white residents, and that substantially all of the pending voters came from paper registrations.

Broce blamed voter registration groups such as the New Georgia Project, which held the registration drive at Diaz’s high school, for registering voters predominately with paper forms, and then turning in “incomplete, illegible, or fraudulent forms,” which skews the data.

Broce added there was no significant racial disparity in voters landing on the pending list when they registered online. She said the issue “is limited to paper applications.”

Nse Ufot, executive director of New Georgia Project, called Broce’s comments “ridiculous” and said the problem was most likely caused by human error during the state’s transcription of the data on the paper forms to a computer. Errors occur because the counties, who record registrations, are short-staffed, workers are improperly trained, and often in a hurry to make election deadlines, she said.

FIXING ERRORS

Under the new law, voters placed on the list do have 26 months to rectify any error, and if they present a valid ID card at a polling place, they can vote. But voting activists like those at the Brennan Center say many people may not realize they are on the pending list in the first place.

When a voter on a pending list checks their personal voter page on the Georgia Secretary of State’s website, it tells them to check their status with county officials. Nowhere does it inform the voter that they have been placed in pending status.

Voting groups say some minority voters don’t have access to the state’s website as they do not own computers. Additionally, based on past experiences with exact match, they say temporary poll workers sometimes do not know how to fix errors or what pending status actually means.

Voting rights could become a flashpoint in this November’s race for governor in Georgia.

Kemp, the secretary of state, is running for office, as is Stacey Abrams, the former Democratic House minority leader in Georgia’s state assembly and the founder of the New Georgia Project. The two have clashed in the past, with Kemp accusing the group of voter fraud, and Abrams accusing Kemp of voter suppression.

(Reporting by Tim Reid and Grant Smith; Editing by Damon Darlin and Ross Colvin)

U.S. gun control movement pushing Congress to act: lawmakers

People take part in a "March For Our Lives" demonstration demanding gun control in Seattle, Washington, U.S. March 24, 2018. REUTERS/Jason Redmond

By Peter Szekely

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The youth-led U.S. gun control movement that flexed its public muscle with huge weekend rallies has already nudged Congress to enact minor firearms changes, but must remain active if it hopes to win more meaningful regulations, lawmakers said on Sunday.

The movement that erupted after the Feb. 14 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, has generated a national conversation about gun rights and has chipped away at legislative gridlock on the issue, they said.

A protestor holds a sign during a "March For Our Lives" demonstration demanding gun control in Sacramento, California, U.S. March 24, 2018. REUTERS/Bob Stro

A protestor holds a sign during a “March For Our Lives” demonstration demanding gun control in Sacramento, California, U.S. March 24, 2018. REUTERS/Bob Strong

“The activism of these young people is actually changing the equation,” Senator Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat, said a day after hundreds of thousands of protesters rallied in Washington.

Tucked into a $1.3 trillion spending bill Congress passed last week were modest improvements to background checks for gun sales and an end to a ban on the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention studying the causes of gun violence.

“These are two things we could not have done in the past,” Kaine said on CNN’s “State of the Union” program. “But the active engagement by young people convinced Congress we better do something.”

The spending bill, which President Donald Trump signed on Friday, also includes grants to help schools prevent gun violence.

The Trump administration also took a step on Friday to ban the sale of bump stocks – devices that enable semi-automatic weapons to fire like machine guns – that helped gunman Stephen Paddock massacre 58 people in Las Vegas in October.

A key focus of Saturday’s march on Washington, which was duplicated in 800 cities across the country and around the world, was an effort to turn emotion into political activism by registering participants to vote.

Americans will vote in November on the entire U.S. House of Representatives and one-third of the Senate.

Gun control advocates have called for universal background checks on people buying guns, bans on assault-style rifles such as the one used to kill 17 students and staff in Parkland, and large-capacity ammunition magazines.

Senator Mark Warner, another Virginia Democrat, declared in the wake of the student-led movement that he would now support bans on such rifles and magazines, which he had voted against in recent years.

“I think it’s time to change our positions and re-examine them,” Warner said on the CBS News “Face the Nation” program.

“I think this time it’s going different,” Warner said. “I think we can actually get it done.”

To win significant changes, lawmakers said the young gun control advocates need to maintain their drive in the face of powerful pro-gun lobbying by the National Rifle Association and those who see gun ownership as a right protected by the U.S. Constitution.

A protestor holds a sign during a "March For Our Lives" demonstration demanding gun control in Sacramento, California, U.S. March 24, 2018. REUTERS/Bob Strong

A protestor holds a sign during a “March For Our Lives” demonstration demanding gun control in Sacramento, California, U.S. March 24, 2018. REUTERS/Bob Strong

“If they don’t keep it up, those that want no change will just sit on their hands,” Ohio Governor John Kasich, a Republican who formerly served in Congress, said on CNN.

Two Republican senators, Marco Rubio of Florida and Joni Ernst of Iowa, said over the weekend that while they supported gun control advocates’ right to protest, they opposed infringing on the constitutional right to bear arms.

Meanwhile, former Pennsylvania Republican Senator Rick Santorum drew an angry response on social media for saying on CNN that, instead of agitating for change, students should “do something about maybe taking CPR classes” or take other training to respond to school shooters.

(Reporting by Peter Szekely; Editing by Paul Simao)

Trump administration switches sides, backs Ohio over voter purges

FILE PHOTO: Voters cast their votes during the U.S. presidential election in Elyria, Ohio, U.S. November 8, 2016. REUTERS/Aaron Josefczyk/File Photo

By Andrew Chung

(Reuters) – The Trump administration has reversed an Obama administration stance and will support Ohio in its bid at the U.S. Supreme Court to revive a state policy of purging people from voter-registration lists if they do not regularly cast ballots.

The Justice Department filed legal papers with the high court on Monday staking out the new position in the voting rights case, backing the Republican-led state’s policy to purge inactive voters.

Former President Barack Obama’s Justice Department had argued in a lower court that Ohio’s policy violated the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, which Congress passed to make it easier for Americans to register to vote.

Civil liberties advocates who challenged Ohio’s policy have said it illegally erased thousands of voters from registration rolls and can disproportionately impact minorities and poor people who tend to back Democratic candidates.

The state on Tuesday welcomed the administration’s action but voting rights advocates opposed it. The League of Women Voters accused the administration of “playing politics with our democracy and threatening the fundamental right to vote” by siding with an Ohio policy it said disenfranchises eligible voters.

“Our democracy is stronger when more people have access to the ballot box – not fewer,” the Democratic National Committee added.

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati last year blocked Ohio’s policy, ruling that it ran afoul of the 1993 law. The state appealed to the Supreme Court, which agreed in May to hear the case.

The legal brief filed by the Justice Department said President Donald Trump’s administration had reconsidered the government’s stance and now supports Ohio.

The brief, signed by Acting U.S. Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall, argued that Ohio’s policy is sound because it does not immediately remove voters from the rolls for failing to vote, but only triggers an address-verification procedure.

The American Civil Liberties Union last year sued Ohio Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted over the policy. The suit said the policy led to the removal of tens of thousands of people from the voter rolls in 2015.

Husted said in a statement he welcomed the federal government’s support, noting Ohio’s policy “has been in place for more than two decades and administered the same way by both Republican and Democrat secretaries of state.”

Under Ohio’s policy, if registered voters miss voting for two years, they are sent registration confirmation notices. If they do not respond and do not vote over the following four years, they are removed from the rolls. Ohio officials argue that canceling inactive voters helps keep voting rolls current, clearing out those who have moved away or died.

Democrats have accused Republicans of taking steps at the state level, including laws imposing new requirements on voters such as presenting certain types of government-issued identification, intended to suppress the vote of groups who generally favor Democratic candidates.

(Reporting by Andrew Chung; Editing by Will Dunham)