A new elections board rule in Clayton County limiting the number of voter registration applications that can be given to an individual for registering voters has angered some community groups that say the county’s quota-system amounts to suppression of minority voters.
The Elections and Registration board recently voted to limit the number of applications given to individuals to 25 at a time. Fulton County is the only other county among the region’s five core counties with the same restriction. Distribution in Cobb, DeKalb and Gwinnett range from 100 to 300 applications at any given time.
Clayton's ruling comes two months before the Oct. 11 deadline for registering new voters in time for the presidential election in November. Clayton elections director Shauna Dozier said Friday the new rule is intended to help her department manage the distribution of the applications without running low on them.
“That’s wrong. Why now when people are really registering to vote now. That’s suppressing the minority vote,” said Chuck Ware, who has been registering new voters in Clayton on behalf of the community group Georgia Stand Up. Ware estimates he’s registered more than 1,000 new voters since June and having to repeatedly return to the elections office to replenish his stock of applications is annoying.
Sen. Gail Davenport, D-Jonesboro, agreed with Ware’s assessment.
"If an organization or people are registering people to vote, they need the materials to do that. Why limit that to 25, if people are registering 200 or 300 people at a time and bringing (the applications) back to the elections board? I see that as some form of voter suppression," said Davenport, who represents the 44th District, which includes parts of Clayton and DeKalb counties.
“We’re not trying to suppress voters. We just need to maintain inventory,” said Dozier who came to Clayton from the Fulton elections office. But Dozier noted that her office would consider distributing more to groups on a case-by-case basis. She also said that individuals within a group could each get 25 applications.
“We’re just don’t have the inventory to hand out large numbers of application,” she said.”They can either get more from us or go to the Secretary of State’s office for more.” Dozier noted that applications can be downloaded from the Clayton elections website (www.claytoncountyga.gov) or the secretary of state’s site (www.sos.ga.gov).
Secretary of State spokeswoman Candice Broce said there is no state law specifying the number or limits to the distribution of applications. That decision is left to the counties, she added.
One member of the Clayton elections board also had misgivings about the county’s new policy.
“Some organizations don’t have the wherewithal to get online to copy applications to distribute to the public,” said elections board member Pat Pullar who voted against limiting the number of applications. “It’s unfortunate voters or potential voters have to go through hoops to get registered.We shouldn’t have to have any challenges to registering to voters.”
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