Georgia's efforts to elect the first black woman governor in American history this November—the Democrat, Stacey Abrams, is in a statistical tie with her Republican opponent—recently ran into a roadblock of the "insidious voter suppression" variety: The Republican secretary of state froze some 53,000 voter-registration applications flagged by the state's "exact match" law, which requires that Georgians submit information identical to that on file with the Department of Driver Services or the Social Security Administration. This policy extends to dropped hyphens, misplaced accents, and transcriptions errors, which means that the difference between, say, "Beyonce" and "Beyoncé" would be enough to land you on the hold list.

Why does this matter? A representative of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law told the AP that this hold process has been shown to have both a high error rate and also a disproportionate impact on minority voters. Sure enough, although the state's population is 32 percent black, according to an analysis conducted by the AP, the list is 70 percent black. Affected Georgia voters must correct the discrepancy within 26 months in order to avoid having their registrations cancelled. (They can clear their holds by presenting their ID at their polling place on Election Day.) In other words, all signs indicate that the Republican official in charge of administering elections is (ab)using his powers to stack the deck in favor of the Republican gubernatorial hopeful.

Oh, also? They're the same guy. Brian Kemp, the current secretary of state, is running for governor.

Wait.

Yeah.

In the middle of a tight gubernatorial race in which he is a participant, the secretary of state is freezing a ton of applications submitted by likely supporters of his opponent?

Yeah.

What does this mean for Georgia voters next month?

The good news is that those who vote in person on Election Day can clear the hold by showing their required voter ID. The bad news is that those who vote by mail won't have the opportunity to do so, and thus risk having their ballots rejected—an issue of particular concern, according to Danielle Lang, senior counsel at the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center, because vote-by-mail requests have increased this cycle, especially among black voters. Anyone erroneously flagged as a non-citizen will probably have to cast a provisional ballot, since no one brings their naturalization certificate to the polls. And because of that 26-month timeline, anyone who doesn't vote in 2018 will likely be purged from the rolls by 2020, which means there will no longer be any hold to clear when they show up to vote.

How could anyone possibly justify this policy?

Uh, because as a Republican, you're terrified that you might not win an election to which you feel entitled, and so you rely on fighting the scourge of "voter fraud"—a nonexistent problem whose champions are dumb, bigoted, or some combination thereof—to cherry-pick the members of the electorate?

Okay, but Kemp doesn't actually say that, right?

No. A spokesman says that he is "fighting to protect the integrity of our elections and ensure that only legal citizens cast a ballot." Kemp has also offered a separate rationale that is somehow as dumb and racist as the policy itself: He claims that the "exact match" policy is necessary thanks to the New Georgia Project, a 2014 nonpartisan voter-registration initiative that allegedly submitted applications containing inaccurate information to his office. NGP "did not adequately train canvassers to ensure legible, complete forms in the 2014 election cycle," he said in a statement. "If these problems continue, it is because the New Georgia Project remains uniquely sloppy in their registration efforts."