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92-year-old Georgia Voter Blocked

By Greg Palast, November 7, 2018

This is why Stacey Abrams won’t quit.

Christine Jordan, age 92, was blocked from voting today, thrown out of the polls with her walker – just one victim of Kemp’s mass cancellation of voter registrations – more than half a million Georgians purged in the night, stealthily, hidden from the public eye.

That’s why I sued Kemp last month in a federal court in Atlanta. To find out the names of every voter, including Grandma Jordan, and expose exactly how Kemp has made their voting rights vanish.

Jordan has been “voting right here since 1968,” says her granddaughter Jessica Lawrence, the year Martin Luther King was shot. Jordan’s voting registration has vanished, no record she EVER voted, though she tells me she’s never missed a vote in these 50 years.

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No points for guessing Grandma Jordan is African-American.

And she had no warning because Brian Kemp’s purge machine strikes with no notice sent. I reviewed my investigative files with Stacey Abrams back in 2014. She told me that what worried her more than anything about Kemp is that, “He is doing this stealthily.”

Abrams also was deeply concerned that our investigation found Kemp was working in secret coordination with Kris Kobach of Kansas. Our new legal actions revealed that Kobach supplied 108,000 of the names that Kemp purged. Purged in secret.

Jordan’s granddaughter can’t stop her tears, standing in the rain, crying. “It’s horrible, …she held civil rights meetings in her home …and they had no record of her. She was here in the West End community when we couldn’t….”

She can’t get out the words, “couldn’t vote.”

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“And today, not being able to come out and vote… It’s extremely emotional. And it BOTHERS me. Bothers me to my core.” Then Jessica apologizes for her tears. “I’m sorry.”

But it’s Brian Kemp who should be sorry. We met Mrs. Jordan after escorting Rahiem Shabazz to the same voting station. They told him he couldn’t vote either. So they gave him a provisional ballot.

Kemp has already ruled Rahiem’s vote won’t be counted.

So Rahiem asked me whether he can go to federal court to get his vote counted. I called our lawyers. We are working through the night on it.

I have been with a hundred purged voters today, shunted to provisional ballots.

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Stacey Abrams says we have to count those ballots. Not because she’s a candidate, but because she’s an American.

And, Mr. Kemp, this is 2018, not 1958.

 

 

 

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