However, in the following state legislative session in early 2017, Kemp asked for and received a state-sanctioned version of exact match in defiance of his 2016 federal court settlement. This use of exact match this time led to 53,000 voter registrations being held hostage in 2018, 80 percent of whom were people of color and 70 percent of whom were black voters, who comprise roughly 30 percent of Georgia’s eligible voters. In 2018, Georgia officials lost another lawsuit pertaining to exact match.
