![]() ![]() National experts who have studied the issue say that registration deadlines don't necessarily make elections more secure, as proponents claim, but they are a useful tool for preventing people from voting, especially those who don't follow politics closely. But an APM Reports investigation has found that 87,000 Georgians were barred from voting in 2018 because they'd registered after the deadline. ![]() PART 2 How a massive purge affected the 2018 electionĭeadlines for people to register to vote have long been an accepted part of American elections and aren't typically mentioned alongside voter ID laws and purges, which Democrats contend are voter suppression tactics. This rule hadn't just barred people from voting on Election Day it had disenfranchised them four weeks earlier. Bourdeaux eventually conceded the race, and Woodall went off to Congress for a fifth term.īut there was one little-discussed election rule that had disenfranchised thousands of people in the 7th District, throughout Georgia and in states across the country in 2018. A recount actually added a handful of votes to Woodall's margin. Except the discarded ballots couldn't account for her loss. "I did think I had a good chance to win," Bourdeaux recalled. Bourdeaux's campaign began examining discarded ballots and calling people whose ballots had been rejected to let them know they could still verify a signature or show an ID to have their votes counted. Election officials had also thrown out absentee ballots at far higher rates than most other parts of the state. Voters had waited for hours at the polls on Election Day, and those problems were most acute in parts of the district with more voters who are people of color. Immediately after the election, Democrats speculated that voter suppression tactics had aided Woodall. In the weeks before the election, an Atlanta Journal Constitution story dubbed the county "ground zero in the fight over alleged voter suppression in Georgia." They viewed Gwinnett County, which makes up a majority of the district, with suspicion because Republicans had managed to maintain power despite an increasingly diverse electorate. What concerned many Democrats were the votes that hadn't been counted. In the end, Woodall won by just 433 votes, or 0.15 percent - the closest House race in the country. A growing number of middle-class African Americans, Asians and Latinos, who typically favor Democrats, had moved into the district in recent years, and the race between Woodall and his Democratic challenger, Carolyn Bourdeaux, was increasingly viewed as a toss-up. In 2018, Republican congressman Rob Woodall was running for reelection in Georgia's 7th Congressional District, a once reliably conservative slice of suburban Atlanta that was quickly changing. This story - the first in a two-part series on alleged voter suppression in Georgia - was reported in partnership with WABE in Atlanta. ![]()
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