Vox Sentences: Georgia’s 53,000 pending votes

Vox Sentences: Georgia’s 53,000 pending votes

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Georgia has put more than 53,000 voter registrations on hold mere weeks before the midterms; Malaysia plans to abolish the death penalty.


Something’s rotten in the Peach State

 Frederic Brown/AFP via Getty Images
  • Georgia has put more than 53,000 voter registrations on hold, with the state’s residents fearing that voter purges and delayed registrations will affect the outcome of the upcoming elections. [AP / Ben Nadler]
  • Nearly 70 percent of the flagged applications are from black voters, yet black people make up about one-third of Georgia’s population. [Vox / P.R. Lockhart]
  • Brian Kemp, Georgia’s secretary of state and the Republican nominee for the open governor’s seat, is in charge of the pending list. His Democratic opponent in the gubernatorial race is Stacey Abrams, the first black female governor candidate from a major party in the US. [NYT / Astead W. Herndon]
  • Voting rights advocates and civil rights groups have protested Kemp’s decision to stay in office until the election, saying it’s inappropriate that he controls voting systems. Abrams’s campaign has demanded his resignation. [CNN / Gregory Krieg]
  • Kemp has waged a years-long battle against voting rights groups and minority voter registration efforts, using an “exact match” program to approve voter IDs. [Talking Points Memo / Cameron Joseph]
  • Voters whose registrations are on hold will be notified via text to verify their information. Tuesday is the last day Georgians can register to vote. [Atlanta Journal-Constitution / Mark Niesse]
  • Voter ID rulings across the US could help decide which party controls the Senate come 2019. Courts issued rulings against restrictions in Missouri but in favor of them in North Dakota; both states have competitive Senate races. [Vox / German Lopez]

Malaysia moves ahead to abolish death penalty

  • The executive branch of the Malaysian government announced it’s pushing ahead to repeal the capital punishment law in a proposal that could be presented to the parliament as early as next week. [WSJ / Yantoultra Ngui]
  • The country’s minister of law, Liew Vui Keong, told local media that paperwork is in the “final stages,” and that all executions should be halted in the meantime. [MalayMail / Ida Nadirah Ibrahim]
  • The government is also considering rescinding the Sedition Act, which has been in place since the colonial era and was used by previous governments to silence critics and opposition politicians. [NYT / Richard C. Paddock]
  • Human rights advocates and foreign diplomats praised the move, with some expressing hope that other Asian countries like China, Singapore, and Indonesia — which still have capital punishment laws — will follow Malaysia’s example. [Al Jazeera]

Miscellaneous

  • A few months after Kim Kardashian West met with President Trump to discuss prison reform, her husband Kanye West also visited the White House, delivering a rambling, 10-minute speech on mental health, job growth, and the 13th Amendment. [Complex / Trace William Cowen]
  • With a little help from genetic engineering, a group of Chinese researchers broke the rules of reproduction and had two same-sex mice give birth to healthy offspring, which then went on to have children of their own. [BBC / James Gallagher]
  • After a self-shredded Banksy print became the most expensive piece of performance art to be sold at an auction, an owner of the artist’s work shredded their own piece, reducing its value to a single pound. [The Verge / Dani Deahl]
  • Fox News criticized Jamie Lee Curtis for using firearms in her films despite her being a gun control advocate; the actress fired back at the news station by saying she “fully support[s]” the Second Amendment. [USA Today / Andrea Mandell]

Verbatim

“Enough is enough. The world is a, sadly, dangerous place for women and girls and we see that again and again. Young women are tired of it. They’re tired of being undervalued, they’re tired of being disregarded, they’re tired of their voices not being invested in and heard.” [Michelle Obama heralded the #MeToo movement on International Day of the Girl and announced the launch of the Global Girls Alliance program by the Obama Foundation / NBC News]


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