Georgia's Democratic gubernatorial nominee Jason Carter is in a tight race with incumbent Nathan Deal — one that could easily be decided by fewer than the 40,000 potential voters with missing registrations. Brant Sanderlin / MCT / Landov

The story starts simply enough: African-Americans and Hispanics across Georgia were registered to vote at levels lower than their white state-mates, so the New Georgia Project was started by the non-profit Third Sector Development to register new voters, concentrating on minority communities.

And that is exactly what the New Georgia Project did.

Over the last few months, the group submitted some 80,000 voter registration forms to the Georgia secretary of state's office — but as of last week, about half those new registrants, more than 40,000 Georgians, were still not listed on preliminary voter rolls. And there is no public record of those 40,000-plus applications, according to State Representative Stacey Adams, a Democrat.

Oh, yeah, did we mention: Georgia's Secretary of State Brian Kemp is a Republican.

The secretary's office says they are not doing anything different than usual in processing the voter applications. These things take time, they say. (Apparently months and months of time — as that is how long some of those forms have been sitting with the state without being processed.)

That's Kemp's story, and he's sticking to it … except this is also Kemp's story: