Kemp On Voter Suppression Concerns During His Tenure As Secretary Of State
Republican gubernatorial candidate Brian Kemp spoke about criticism he faced as secretary of state in an interview with WABE’s Denis O’Hayer.
David Goldman / Associated Press
During his time as Secretary of State, Republican Brian Kemp has faced much criticism about his handling of Georgia’s election systems. Specifically, he’s faced lawsuits over his handling of voter roles.
As “Morning Edition” continues its conversations with the major party candidates running for governor of Georgia, Denis O’Hayer asked Kemp about the issue.
On his office’s efforts to maintain lists of active voters
We’ve been sued by the left and the right on list maintenance issues. We get sued by the left for doing it. We get sued by the right if we’re not doing it fast enough. We haven’t been able to do a lot of the list maintenance that we normally would, because we’ve had so many elections. You know some of these claims are quite honestly outrageous and the left doesn’t want us ever to remove anybody.
On his role in efforts to reduce voting hours for elections
That was the legislature that was doing that. You know we have not taken a role in any of that.
On the value of uniform voting hours in the state
I think we need to keep uniformity, because it does get confusing. It’s like, city elections in Atlanta can keep polling locations open until 8 p.m. and everybody else [closes at] 7 p.m. Well, if you’re on the air broadcasting live: ‘You can go cast your ballot till 8 o’clock tonight in Atlanta.’ People that are listening to that in Cobb or Gwinnett, they might think the same thing, and they go at 7:30 p.m., and their poll’s closed. That’s the issue that I have. But that’s a legislative thing, and I trust that the legislative process would deal with that.
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