The state of Georgia is currently seeing a massive conflict of interest unfold. The head of elections, Secretary of State Brian Kemp, is currently running for governor as the Republican candidate. Meanwhile, he's seriously squandering confidence in the fairness of the election by holding 53,000 registrations on mere technicalities.
Kemp has the discretion to shoot down registrations that aren't considered "exact matches" with other records. Generally, the discrepancies are tiny — a misspelling or even missing punctuation like hyphens, accents and apostrophes. Often it's the government official, not the voter, who has input the information incorrectly, which is a bogus reason to justify blocking someone from voting.
Kemp's opponent, Stacey Abrams, is attempting to become the state's first black governor, so it's relevant that 70 percent of the people whose registrations are being put aside for errors are African Americans (in a state that's just 30 percent black, mind you.) The errors could be reconciled quite easily in most cases, but Kemp is choosing not to validate them, in what can only be assumed is a partisan, self-serving attempt to win the election.
Abrams has called on Kemp to end this major conflict of interest by stepping down from his role as Secretary of State, and we the people who want to see fair elections are calling for the same. It's not valid to win an election by arbitrarily blocking thousands from casting their ballots.
Mr. Kemp, we encourage you to resign as secretary of state immediately and restore confidence in the fairness of elections.
