Thursday, July 19, 2018

If you can't win, cheat

Maria Palacios, 28, was born in Mexico.  She lived in Georgia since she was four.  She became a legal Georgia resident in 2009 and a U.S. citizen in June 2017. 

She is a candidate for the Georgia State House of Representatives.  I should say was a candidate.  The Secretary of State, Brian Kemp, has thrown her off the ballot under the guise that she could not be a citizen of Georgia until she became a citizen of the U.S.  This is a new interpretation of the Georgia Constitution, but it does have the effect of leaving her Republican opponent as the only candidate on the November ballot.

Ms. Palacios is appealing to the Georgia Supreme Court with the help of ACLU.  

Mr. Kemp, the Secretary of State, is in a run-off for the Republican nomination for governor.  He is running ads showing him with a shotgun and bragging that he might use his pickup truck to round “illegal aliens” and “take ‘em home myself.”  He has been endorsed by Trump.


Info for this post is from Richard Fausset, “Narrow Reading of State Citizenship Keeps Georgia Woman Off a Ballot, New York Times, (19 July 2018), p. A11.

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