(CNN) A coalition of advocacy groups has launched a lawsuit to block Georgia from enforcing a practice critics say endangers the votes of more than 50,000 people in November and potentially larger numbers headed into the 2020 presidential election cycle.

The Campaign Legal Center and Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law argued in the suit, which was filed in a federal district court on Thursday, that the state's "exact match" requirement violates the Voting Rights Act, the National Voter Registration Act and the First and Fourteenth Amendments.

The office of Secretary of State Brian Kemp, who is now running for governor in a hotly contested race with Democratic former state House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams, used the system from 2013 to 2016 but stopped in 2017 as part of a settlement stemming from separate litigation. But the Republican-held state legislature soon stepped in and passed the protocol into law. A recent Associated Press report found around 53,000 people -- nearly 70% of them African-Americans -- had their registrations placed in limbo because of some kind of mismatch with drivers license or social security information. Kemp, in a tweet, said, "The 53,000 Georgians on our 'pending' list can vote in the Nov. 6th election."

As the AP report stoked a national firestorm, the Abrams campaign called for Kemp to resign as the state's top elections official in order for Georgia voters to "have confidence that their Secretary of State (will) competently and impartially oversee this election."

In the lawsuit, which was formally threatened back in July and has no connection to the campaign, the plaintiffs argue that the controversial "exact match" checks had been shown "to disproportionately and negatively impact the ability of voting-eligible African-American, Latino and Asian-American applicants" even before the process was signed into law by the current governor, Republican Nathan Deal, in 2017.

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