So there's a handful of forms that might be fraudulent and have been set aside from legitimate forms, plus there are a bunch of others where counties need to either forward forms to the correct county or verify the information. Sounds to me like a system that is working the way it's supposed to work. Moreover, as State Rep. Stacey Abrams, the Democratic leader in the state House and the leader of the group points out, her group was required to submit all forms they received, even the ones that were questionable, which they flagged for further review. And you know who requires that? Yep: Georgia's secretary of state.
So you have a group that is doing exactly what Georgia's secretary of state requires of them and yet because they are doing what he required, he accuses them of fraud based on at most a handful of cases—cases that are almost certainly examples of canvassers trying to get paid for work they didn't do, not a conspiracy to commit actual voter fraud.
What in the world could possibly have caused him to chart such an unreasonable path? Let Big Dog explain:
In Georgia, [former President Bill] Clinton pointed to the need to register more black voters. He visited there this weekend to boost Democratic Senate candidate Michelle Nunn. “African-Americans are as under-registered in Georgia, historically, as Hispanics are in Texas,” he said in an interview. “If we can increase the number, increase the vote, then I think you just need to go out and find the rest of the state, the people that are for you.”
In fact, the day before Kemp issued his subpoena, First Lady Michelle Obama appeared in the state and said:
“If just 50 Democratic voters per precinct who didn’t vote in 2010 get out and vote this November—just 50 per precinct—then Michelle Nunn and Jason Carter will win.”
And even Kemp himself understands what's going on, because in July he said:
In closing I just wanted to tell you, real quick, after we get through this runoff, you know the Democrats are working hard, and all these stories about them, you know, registering all these minority voters that are out there and others that are sitting on the sidelines, if they can do that, they can win these elections in November.
In retrospect, those comments look like Kemp was planning all along to target New Georgia Project, but when he made them, he was trying to encourage Republicans to do the same thing:
Well, we’ve got to do the exact same thing. I would encourage all of you – if you have an Android or Apple device, download that app, and make it your goal to register one new Republican voter
Can't argue with that—nobody should ever be discouraged from voting or from trying to get more people to vote. But now that Kemp knows how successful Democratic efforts have been been, he's changed his tune, because more than anything else, the Republican victory plan depends on people not voting. And if he thinks that going on fishing expeditions against groups that threaten the GOP's plan will help him politically, that's exactly what he'll do—and it's exactly what he's doing. The best way for people in Georgia to fight back? To do what Kemp and his fellow Republicans don't want: To get registered, and to vote.