Civil rights lawsuit filed against Ga. Sec. of State Brian Kemp

ATLANTA (WJBF) - A new lawsuit set to be filed against Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp and the plaintiffs say every Georgia voter needs to know about it right now.

Have you received something like this in your mailbox? A simple postcard that might look kind of like junk mail.

But if you didn't return it and you missed voting in a few elections you, and tens of thousands more Georgians, might not be registered to vote anymore, and you'll have received no further notice.

Some say that's an urgent problem because October 9th is the last day to re-register before the November election.

Plaintiffs say that's why they held this press conference before their suit gets filed, so that people know to check and don't get denied their right to vote.

They claim that up until 2018 Secretary of State Brian Kemp participated in an interstate cross check program which generates the postcards if people are believed to move.

If you didn't send the postcard back and you sat out a few elections, you're removed from voting, but don't receive any notification to that effect.

Those filing the suit say that some of the voters on that list who were canceled never left Georgia but were wrongly removed after they were matched to voters in other states who don't even have the same middle name.

"Brian Kemp is playing games with words," says Greg Palast, investigative journalist for Rolling Stone. "He used this racially poisonous list. It's a wrong list, I don't care if you're white, black or purple. He shouldn't be using this list, he should not be in this program. There are people losing the list, people are losing their votes. There are thousands of voters who never left the state."

He says the information he's working on was leaked from the Secretary of States office, but I spoke with Candice Broce who is their press officer and she claims everything the plaintiffs allege is untrue.

Broce tells me that zero people have been removed based on crosscheck and says the plaintiffs should be embarrassed.

“This threatened lawsuit has no merit. To be crystal clear, Georgia has never used data from the Crosscheck Program to conduct list maintenance in any capacity. Zero voters have been removed from the rolls based on Crosscheck data in this state. Greg Palast is completely blind to this indisputable fact in his pursuit of a sensational headline. Real journalists have already reported that Georgia does not use this data for list maintenance. Frankly, Mr. Palast should be embarrassed, and any credibility that he had left is now completely destroyed," says Broce.

Voters can check their registration status online -- or on the Secretary of State's app.

The deadline to register is on October 9th.