ATLANTA – Nearly 1,700 voting precincts in 13 states have been shut down since 2012, many in black or Latino communities, after a landmark court decision that removed federal oversight of local voting practices, according to a new report.

The report, released this week by the Leadership Conference Education Fund, showed a surge in poll closures after a U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2013 that gutted a section of the Voting Rights Act requiring certain states and cities obtain federal approval before changing voting laws or practices.

After the law, which targeted communities with a history of voter discrimination, was struck down, Texas saw 750 polling locations closed, Arizona lost 320, and Georgia shut down 214, according to the report "Democracy Diverted: Polling Place Closures and the Right to Vote."

Voting rights advocates argued the court's decision in Shelby County v. Holder made it easier for elections officials to disenfranchise black and minority voters. From 2012 to 2018, a total of 1,688 polling locations closed.

Leigh Chapman, voting rights program director for the Leadership Conference Education Fund, said the mass polling place closures are a form of voter suppression. In many cases, she said, voters were not informed their voting precinct was closed or relocated.

“This (study) is a really important part of the record to justify why we need to restore the Voting Rights Act and why communities of color have been negatively impacted by discriminatory voting laws and policies," said Chapman, who wrote the report.

Voting rights advocates lobby lawmakers to pass the Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would restore the Department of Justice's mandate to approve local voting practice changes.

Georgia's counties saw a higher percentage of polling location closures than any other state. According to the report, Lumpkin County, a majority-white county in the north central part of the state, closed 89% of its polling places. Warren County, a majority-black county east of Atlanta, closed 83%.

The accelerated closures left seven counties in Georgia with just one polling place to serve hundreds of square miles.

In Texas, the counties of Dallas, Travis and Harris led with the most polling place closures. All three counties have a high population of black and Latino voters. The closures were part of a statewide effort to centralize voting centers.

“The people enacting these changes often count on no one noticing when they make the changes," said Beth Stevens, voting rights program director of the Texas Civil Rights Project. "It’s a choice that so often falls on the most vulnerable voters."

Georgia election officials were criticized last year for closing or consolidating precincts in black neighborhoods, making it harder for voters. Long lines at some Atlanta-area precincts forced voters to wait several hours to cast their ballot.

The November 2018 election in Georgia gained national attention when Stacy Abrams vied to be the nation's first black female governor. She lost to Gov. Brian Kemp after a bitterly fought election.

The Leadership Conference Education Fund report cites a 2015 memo from Kemp, who was secretary of that state at the time, to county officials encouraging them to merge polling places. Kemp mentioned twice in the memo that Shelby v. Holder removed the requirement to submit polling place changes to the Department of Justice, the report says.

A spokeswoman for the Georgia Secretary of State's Office said state law allows individual counties to independently "determine the appropriate amount of polling locations for their jurisdictions, whether decreasing or increasing depending on several factors, including geography and cost."

Nse Ufot, executive director of the New Georgia Project, a group that works to register and engage Georgia voters, was pleased to see the report. She called the closures "a surreptitious way to suppress the vote.”

Ufot calls on voting rights groups to work together to monitor the decisions by elections officials across the state.

“Voter suppression is much more sophisticated than it has been in previous decades, which requires us to come up with more sophisticated solutions," she said. "The threat exists, and our elections infrastructure needs to be defended from bad actors at every level of government."