Dozens of black voters ordered off bus bound for polls in Georgia amid razor-thin governor race
Dozens of black senior citizens in Louisville, Georgia, were ordered off a bus bound for the polls Monday after county officials said the event constituted prohibited "political activity." Activists called it an "intimidation tactic" in a razor-thin race for governor that's become engulfed in a fight over voting rights.
Polls show the contest between Republican Brian Kemp and Democrat Stacey Abrams is basically a dead heat. Civil rights groups are suing Kemp for putting more than 53,000 voter registration applications on hold, mostly from minority voters.
Abrams is vying to become the first African-American woman governor in the South. She has accused Kemp, who currently oversees Georgia's election system, of dropping more than a million voters from the rolls since 2012 and closing polling places in African-American communities.
"He is someone who is tilting the playing field in his direction and in the direction of his party," Abrams told CBS News' Nancy Cordes. "It is absolutely voter suppression."
The biggest controversy surrounds the new "exact match" law that put the registrations of 53,000 voters, most of them African Americans, on hold because of discrepancies in the way their names are spelled in state databases.
Marsha Appling-Nunez got tripped up by a missing letter.
"It was unnecessary that I had to go through so many hoops to be here right now as a registered voter," Appling-Nunez said.
On Fox News, Kemp called the issue a smokescreen. "Those folks that are on the pending list, all they have to do is go to the polls, show their photo ID, and they can vote," he said.
Kemp says he's enforcing the law and that if people want to vote, their name should be recorded accurately. To that point, Abrams countered, "The challenge is that he knew from experience that this law has a disproportionate effect on certain communities because he was sued for exactly this reason in 2016."
Appling-Nunez recently found out that she has now been re-registered but only after going online more than 40 times. Kemp's campaign declined our request for an interview, but in a statement said Abrams' campaign is trying to create "fake outrage to drive voters to the polls."
