*Civil Rights leaders demand the return of 106,000 registrants purged from voter rolls by Atlanta’s Secretary of State Brian Kemp who moved from Georgia – but have not. This purging method is called Caging.
The list was created for Kemp with Trump’s notorious ‘voter-fraud’ crusader, Kris Kobach of Kansas.
Facing a federal lawsuit, Kemp turned over more than half a million names of purged voters. We have found 106,000 errors – we expect to find more.
The Atlanta press conference, focussing on Georgia, is the first of several nationwide actions, the result of legal actions and investigation in 27 states led by Rev. Jesse Jackson and investigative reporter Greg Palast following up on Palast’s exposé in Rolling Stone.
There will be teleconference with national press Tuesday 10/2 regarding the 27-state action.
Racially biased voter cleansing uncovered through federal law suit action.
* Plaintiffs Helen Butler (Georgia Coalition for the Peoples Agenda), Joe Beasley (Rainbow/PUSH), Rev. Jesse Jackson and investigative reporter Greg Palast (Rolling Stone).
* Demanding restoration of rights before Midterm election.
* Palast will make public the name of every one of half a million Georgians purged by Kemp.
In the past weeks, after much resistance, and facing a federal law suit, Secretary of State Brian Kemp has turned over the names of over half a million Georgians suspiciously purged by Kemp, the GOP nominee for Governor.
Expert investigation of the list finds that at least 106,000 of those purged were wrongfully tagged by as having left Georgia. They have not.
Worse, the methodology for targeting and removing voters, called, “Interstate Crosscheck,” is racially biased in the extreme.
Georgia rights leaders are demanding Kemp return these voters to rolls immediately, before the election.
Further, plaintiffs have notified Kemp that his stonewalling the demand for additional information will force them to file against him under the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) of 1993 which requires officials to make public information about cancelling voters citizenship rights.
A expert team of investigators continues to hunt for other wrongful removals which could easily number in the tens, or hundreds, of thousands more in Georgia.
Beginning this week, Georgians may see if they have been purged from voter rolls by going to GregPalast.com and typing in their name and zip code so Georgians’ vote (and privacy) can be protected. Georgians can then re-register and save their vote.
Background
In 2016, Rolling Stone printed investigative reporter Greg Palast’s exposé of the scheme called “Interstate Crosscheck” that resulted in the mass purge of voters in 26 states prior to the election.
Brian Kemp (and other GOP officials) have kept secret Crosscheck “target” lists of voters to remove—7.2 million names in all across the nation.
Palast, who began his investigation in Georgia in 2014, obtained the secret list of voters originally targeted for purge in Georgia–overwhelmingly Black, Hispanic and Asian-Americans.
The “Crosscheck” lists were created for Kemp and other GOP voting operatives by Kris Kobach, Kansas Secretary of State, known as Donald Trump’s chief hunter of so-called “fraudulent” voters.
Kobach’s Crosscheck, used in Georgia by Kemp, purports to locate voters who voted twice illegally, or are registered in two states. For example, the list states that 583 James Browns, most with different middle names, even James Brown Jr. and James Brown Sr., are the same voter!
Here is a typical and unedited screenshot from the Kemp target list of “identical” voters, beginning with Gary Anthony Jackson of Georgia who is supposed to be the same voter as Gary Lee Jackson Jr. of Illinois.
Because the algorithm for “matching” uses just common last names, minority voters (Garcia, Kim, Jackson) are overwhelmingly tagged, and wrongly targeted. Voters targeted are sent a postcard—looks like junk mail—and 80% simply ignore it. Don’t return the postcard, lose your vote.
The result: as many as 1.1 million people nationwide were purged in 2016, wrongly, and overwhelmingly minority voters.
In Georgia, the ACLU has already forced Kemp to restore the voting status of 159,000 voters who simply moved within their county. We aim to expose and force Kemp to reinstate approximately at least 106,000 voters he claims have moved … but in fact, are merely victims of the Kris Kobach Crosscheck common-name trick.
Nationwide, we aim to return over 1 million citizens to the voter rolls, almost all purged by GOP officials.
Co-plaintiff in Illinois is Rev. Jesse Jackson, in Georgia, Palast’s co-plaintiff is Helen Butler of the Georgia Coalition for a Peoples Agenda founded by the Rev. Joseph Lowery and Joe Beasley, Southern States Director of Rainbow/PUSH.
Other organizations are offering support.
Plaintiffs are represented by Jeanne Mirer of Mirer Mazzocchi Julien of New York. The filed the required 90-day notice of intent to file a federal lawsuit against Kemp under the NVRA.
This massive multi-state investigation is funded by the Puffin, Sustainable Markets, Cloud Mountain, and Solidaire foundations, 501c3 non-partisan not-for-profit.
Copies of the legal filings, films and reports are available on request from GregPalast.com/contact/ or the law firm.
Palast is known for his investigations for BBC Television and The Guardian of Britain, including his revealing, in 2000, that Florida had removed tens of thousands of Black men from the voters rolls of that state, falsely accusing them of being illegal ex-con voters, and thereby electing George Bush as President.
# Palast, a Puffin Foundation fellow in investigative reporting, is the author of the New York Times bestsellers, Billionaires & Ballot Bandits and The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and Documentary The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: The Case of the Stolen Election . His investigative reports can be seen on BBC Television Newsnight.
“Greg Palast is one of those inconveniently stubborn journalists — much like Glenn Greenwald and the late Gary Webb — who gets his teeth into a story and shakes it bloody right there in the middle of the parlor, dreadfully inconveniencing the pampered swells of the elite political press, and revolting the serious thinkers who get to go on PBS and moan about the genuine crisis of American political civility. Palast has been on the voter-caging story ever since people like Pastor Whiting got screwed 14 years ago. Palast [has] dropped a bomb into the elections that has left credibility shrapnel all over the democratic process, if anyone cares to look for it.” Charles Pierce, Esquire
source:
Ilene Proctor
[email protected]
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www.ileneproctor.com
https://www.taghollywood.com
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