Suzanne and I moved from one county to another here in Georgia, requiring us to change addresses on our driver’s licenses, and at the same time, our voter registrations. Mine was pretty simple, because I had recently renewed my driver’s license, I just had to inform the Secretary of State’s office that we had moved.
Suzanne’s wasn’t so simple. She has to go to the Department of Driver’s Services (DDS) and go through the whole SecureID process, which is a pain in the butt, requiring lots of documents and basically taking time out of the workday to go sit in the DDS office for several hours.
Georgia voting law requires that this be done prior to registering to vote, and registering to vote has to be done 30 days prior to election day. With the timing of our move, combined with everything else that has to happen in life, Suzanne wasn’t able to get this done in time. For many people, this would mean they wouldn’t get a chance to vote. She’s determined, however, and will be traveling back to our former home district (where, to be fair, she works) in order to vote.
Many people wouldn’t do this, or don’t have the ability to do this. Other states have proven that it’s possible to have fair elections with same-day registration and voting – why don’t we?
Voter suppression is subtle, and it works. Here in Georgia, we have the obvious conflict of interest of a Secretary of State who is running for governor, and hasn’t recused himself from the office during the election. Notably, we’re now facing a constitutional crisis as Kemp’s office has used Georgia’s “exact match” law to potentially exclude 53,000 voters.
Voter suppression is subtle, and it works Click To TweetI could go on, but here’s the short version: you have a little more than a week to make sure you can vote in your state. Do everything you can to make sure that you can vote in your state. And then, go vote.