Over the past few weeks, the broadcast networks -- and especially CNN and MSNBC -- have promoted claims by Democrats that thousands of minority voters in Georgia have been discriminated against because at least 53,000 new voter registrations were put on hold as "pending" until mistakes could be corrected.
But those same networks have ignored recent revelations about why those applications were put on hold in the first place that discredit claims of racial discrimination.
As the networks have recalled that the 53,000 pending registrations that were written about by AP were flagged mostly because of an "exact match law," there has been a recurring tendency to harp on extreme examples of how an application might be rejected if something minor like an extra space or period appears in an address or name, or possibly rejection for omitting a hyphen from one's name. The suggestion was that many of these applications might have been put on hold for unnecessarily picky reasons as information on applications was being checked against other databases that contain an applicant's personal information.
Additionally, there were claims by experts that minorities are more likely to find that their names have been misspelled by state employees so that they face a greater possibility of having their applications rejected, thus leading to estimates that 80 percent of the applicatons on hold were for minority voters.
But, earlier this week, both The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and conservative activist Erick Erickson have written up details of why many of the applications were put on hold. The bulk of the rejections -- about 39,000 -- did not contain proper Social Security numbers as required. And significant numbers of other applications on the list included 17-year-olds who had not yet turned 18, new American citizens who needed to prove their citizenship, applications with apparently made up names or improper addresses, and duplicates.
It has also been previously noted by NewsBusters that a large percentage of the flagged applications were turned in by a liberal group called the New Georgia Project that was actually founded by Democratic nominee Stacey Abrams which deliberatedly concentrates on registering minorities. When large numbers of the group's workers failed to properly fill in applications, it was therefore not suprising that a large percentage of those applications would be for minority voters.
The same news shows that were so eager to portray Georgia Republican gubernatorial nominee and current Secretary of State Brian Kemp as targeting minorities have not taken the time to update viewers and fill them in on the details of why these holds occurred.
