Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp made a lunchtime visit to Gainesville Tuesday, touting the success and the security of the voting process in Georgia.
Kemp told members of the Gainesville Kiwanis Club his office has a motto: "We make it easy to vote and hard to cheat."
Kemp outlined the progress he said his office has made when it comes to making voter registration easy, and he also defended his office against allegations that registration applications have gone unprocessed. He referenced a Washington Post article that claimed 100,000 Georgia voter applications had not been processed and blamed the Secretary of State's Office.
"What they don't tell you is that we don't register voters in the Secretary of State's Office - that is the county registrar that does that," Kemp said. "It comes through our system, but it [registration] is done at the county level."
Kemp said any mailed registrations also are processed at the county level.
"And, I can promise you that our county registrars are processing every single voter application that they get," Kemp said.
Kemp said, too, that he ran on the promise that the voting process in Georgia would be secure, and he told his audience, he has kept that promise. He said voter fraud does happen, but it's addressed thoroughly.
"One of the things a lot of people don't realize is that we have a law enforcement division in our agency, we have about 20 post-certified investigators," said Kemp. "We take every single complaint we get - whether they're politically-motivated or not - and look into them."
After his formal presentation, Kemp talked for a few minutes about the large early-voting turnout so far. He said there had been very few problems and he expected the turnout to remain brisk, but probably not record-breaking.
"I could be completely wrong - this could be a historic election for turnout - we're seeing numbers a lot bigger than 2012, but not 2008," Kemp said. He is predicting a turnout in the low 70-percent range at this point.
Kemp said he believes more voters are taking advantage of early voting in order to avoid lines on November 8, the date of the General Election.
At the time Kemp spoke around 12:45 p.m., early voter turnout statewide was 745,348.
