Date on which a legal settlement was announced that will end Georgia’s controversial “exact match” voter registration verification scheme: 2/10/2017

Number of mismatches the scheme permitted between all letters and numbers in the registration applicant’s name, date of birth, driver’s license and last four Social Security digits on the one hand and the information in the state’s Department of Drivers Service or Social Security Administration databases on the other: 0

Number of days the applicant had to correct the mismatch before the registration application was automatically rejected, even if it was a data entry error or involved something as minor as a missing accent mark: 40

Details about the cause of the mismatch included in the letter sent notifying registrants of the problem, making it difficult to resolve: 0

Year in which the program went into effect: 2010

Number of Georgia citizens who’ve been disenfranchised as a result: more than 42,000

Month in which a coalition of voting rights advocacy groups sued over Georgia’s program, charging that it violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and the First and 14th Amendments to the Constitution: 9/2016

Of the almost 35,000 people whose applications were cancelled as a result of the policy between July 2013 and July 15, 2016, percent who identified as white: 13.6

As Asian-American: 4.8

As Latino: 7.9

As Black: 63.6

Overall, percent of those whose applications were not processed as a result of the exact-match scheme who were non-white, in part because they have names more likely to lead to discrepancies: over 86

Number of other states that are currently considering similar exact match voter registration systems: 5*

* Florida, Indiana, Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia

(Click on figure to go to source.)


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Editorial director of the NC-based Institute for Southern Studies, publisher of Facing South and Southern Exposure, where she focuses on energy & the environment.

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