House Democrats Are Investigating Voter Suppression in Georgia

The House oversight committee is requesting documents from Gov. Brian Kemp.

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp speaks at the University of Georgia on December 11, 2018.Joshua L. Jones/AP

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

House Democrats are opening an investigation into widespread reports of voter suppression in Georgia during the 2018 election. They requested extensive documents from Gov. Brian Kemp, who oversaw his own election as secretary of state.

Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), who chairs the House oversight committee, announced the investigation on Wednesday. “The Committee is particularly concerned by reports Georgians faced unprecedented challenges with registering to vote and significant barriers to casting their votes during your tenure as Secretary of State and during the 2018 election,” Cummings wrote in a letter to Kemp that he released Wednesday.

Cummings cited a multitude of voting problems under Kemp’s watch, including that 1.4 million people were purged from the voting rolls from 2012 to 2016; the registrations of 53,000 people—80 percent of them voters of color—were put on hold before the election; 214 polling places were closed while Kemp was secretary of state; and there were lines of more than four hours at heavily black voting precincts.

The committee asked Kemp for all communications and documents relating to voter roll purges, polling place closures, and problems with voting machines, as well as a program Kemp oversaw that blocked voter registration applications if information on the registration form didn’t exactly match state or federal databases. Cummings has previously said he wanted Kemp to testify before his committee.

Cummings also expressed alarm about Kemp’s refusal to recuse himself as secretary of state while running for governor and a statement falsely accusing Georgia Democrats of “cyber crimes” just before the election, requesting internal communications about both issues.

This appears to be the beginning of the most in-depth investigation into voter suppression in Georgia. Kemp’s Democratic opponent, Stacey Abrams, filed a federal lawsuit against Georgia’s voting laws after coming 18,000 votes short of forcing a runoff. Abrams said Kemp’s suppressive voting tactics allowed him to “tilt the playing field in his favor.”

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate