http://time.com/5421332/georgia-brian-kemp-secretary-of-state-53000-voters-governor/ Report: Georgia's Secretary of State Is Blocking 53,000 Voter Registrations as He Runs for Governor She tried re-registering, but with about one month left before a November election that will decide a governor’s race and some competitive U.S. House races, Appling-Nunez’s application is one of over 53,000 sitting on hold with Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp’s office. And unlike Appling-Nunez, many people on that list — which is predominantly black, according to an analysis by The Associated Press — may not even know their voter registration has been held up. Kemp, who’s also the Republican candidate for governor, is in charge of elections and voter registration in Georgia. But through a process that Kemp calls voter roll maintenance and his opponents call voter roll purges, Kemp’s office has cancelled over 1.4 million voter registrations since 2012. Nearly 670,000 registrations were cancelled in 2017 alone. Under the policy, information on voter applications must precisely match information on file with the Georgia Department of Driver Services or the Social Security Administration. Election officials can place non-matching applications on hold. An application could be held because of an entry error or a dropped hyphen in a last name, for example. An analysis of the records obtained by The Associated Press reveals racial disparity in the process. Georgia’s population is approximately 32 percent black, according to the U.S. Census, but the list of voter registrations on hold with Kemp’s office is nearly 70 percent black.
Properly purging the voter rolls on a regular basis is a requirement of Federal law. Under the Obama administration the federal government demanded that all the states -- particularly the Southern states -- take steps to properly purge their voter rolls in a manner consistent with federal law. Many states -- especially Southern states -- had not purged their voter rolls for decades. Brian Kemp and Georgia is merely complying with federal law in a manner demanded by the Obama administration.
The article has a lot more information that brings a few things into context than what you provided here. For example, the method of registration that caused the issues in consistency seemed to have been the method of choice of blacks. His office says “the law applies equally across all demographics,” but these numbers became skewed by “the higher usage of one method of registration among one particular demographic group.” Additionally, the man has nullified 1.4 million inconsistent registrations during his tenure, and there are no statistics provided on the disparity of racial demographics there - my guess is that it wouldn't paint the story TIME wanted, so they left that out. As gwb stated, this is part of Federal Law. Because it hadn't been done forever doesn't mean that now it is being done, it is being done with intent to suppress voting.
This was fully explained and cited in an earlier thread on the situation in Georgia -- including the exact rulings from the Obama administration in context of the national voting rights act. Use ET Search to find it and get full context on the situation.
I think the times was focusing it's resources on the latest particular nullifications, given that he's in charge of the office and conveniently running for governor. I would also like to see the demographic make up of the million plus.