A federal judge on Friday found that Georgia voting practices challenged by a group linked to Democrat Stacey Abrams do not violate the constitutional rights of voters and ruled in the state’s favor on all remaining issues in a lawsuit filed nearly four years ago.
“Although the voting system in Georgia is not perfect, the practices attacked do not violate the Constitution or the PRA,” wrote U.S. District Judge Steve Jones in Atlanta, referring to the Voting Rights Act of 1965. He argued in a 288 -side decision.
The lawsuit was filed in November 2018, just weeks after Abrams narrowly lost the gubernatorial race to Republican Brian Kemp. During that contest, Abrams had accused Kemp, then Secretary of State, of using his position as the state’s top election official to encourage voter repression. Kemp vehemently denied the allegations.
Kemp welcomed the ruling on Friday, calling it a loss for Abrams.
“Judge Jones’ ruling exposes this legal effort for what it really is: a tool used by a politician who hopes to unfairly weaponize the legal system to further her own political ends,” Kemp said in a statement.
Abrams and Fair Fight expressed disappointment with the decision but said the lawsuit helped bring about positive change in Georgia.
“While the court’s actions are not the preferred outcome, the conduct of this trial and previous cases and legislative actions represent a hard-fought victory for voters who have endured long lines, onerous birthdate requirements and precise gaming laws that disproportionately affect blacks and browns voters,” Abrams said in a statement.
The trial began in mid-April and took place during the ongoing primary elections in Georgia. These contests set the stage for a rematch between Kemp and Abrams, who won their parties’ gubernatorial nominations for November’s general election.
Over the course of 21 days of trial spanning more than two months, nearly five dozen witnesses were summoned. It was a trial, which means there was no jury and Jones had sole judgment.
Abrams’ organization Fair Fight Action filed the lawsuit along with Care in Action, a nonprofit organization that advocates for domestic workers. Several churches later joined as plaintiffs. It was originally very broad and called for a fundamental overhaul of the Georgian electoral system.
By the time the trial came, the scope had narrowed significantly, after changes in state law settled some allegations and others were dismissed by the court.
“This is a voting rights case that resulted in wins and losses for all parties throughout the course of the litigation, culminating in what is believed to be the longest voting rights court case in the history of the Northern District of Georgia,” Jones wrote.
The remaining issues discussed at length during the process concerned the exact match policy, the statewide voter registration list, and the procedure for in person cancellation of absentee ballots. Fair Fight contended that the negative effects of this policy were felt disproportionately by people of color and newcomers and amounted to violations of the US Constitution and the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
Officials in Georgia have created a landscape where it’s “harder to register, stay registered, and ultimately harder to vote,” Allegra Lawrence-Hardy, an attorney for Fair Fight and the other plaintiffs, said during her closing arguments in late June . The barriers to voting are not caused by inevitable human error, but result from “decisions designed to discourage certain individuals from voting,” she said.
She highlighted testimonies from voters who had trouble registering or casting their ballots, voters who shared their stories because they wanted the court to understand what they were facing.
Josh Belinfante, an attorney for state election officials, said in his closing remarks that Georgia’s elections are constitutional and do not violate the Voting Rights Act. Georgia’s policy of automatic voter registration and the recent significant increase in African-American voter registration are not signs that a state is suppressing voters, he argued.
While Fair Fight collected stories from more than 3,000 voters, they found very few unable to cast a ballot, and none during the 2020 election, Belinfante noted. Instead, he said, the evidence showed that problems were generally resolved quickly once state officials were contacted.
Fair Fight’s goal was to elect the Democrats and make Georgia a blue state, and the organization used a false voter-suppression narrative to motivate people to get behind their cause, Belinfante said.
“You have to decide if the case fits the rhetoric,” Belinfante told Jones. “The answer is no.”
The plaintiffs argued that state officials provided county election officials with insufficient training on how to annul mail-in ballots, which created significant problems for voters who attempted to vote in person after requesting a ballot-by-mail.
The plaintiffs also challenged two aspects of the state’s “exact match” policy for voter registration applications. The plaintiffs say problems arise for voters when the information on their applications doesn’t exactly match what’s in driver’s license or Social Security databases, or when the information on new US citizens in the driver’s license database hasn’t been updated.
Finally, plaintiffs said state officials mismanaged the voter registration database. They cited alleged problems with three list maintenance processes: deregistering when a person is convicted of a crime, merging records believed to be duplicates, and canceling voters who are believed to be that they are dead.
Jones noted that while the plaintiffs called witnesses who testified about voting struggles about the practices in question, most ended up voting.