The U.S. Justice Department has struck down a controversial Georgia election law as a violation of Voting Rights Act:

In a letter released on Monday, the Justice Department said the state's voter-verification program is frequently inaccurate and has a "discriminatory effect" on minority voters in Georgia.

"This flawed system frequently subjects a disproportionate number of African-American, Asian and/or Hispanic voters to additional, and more importantly, erroneous burdens on the right to register to vote," said Loretta King, acting assistant attorney general of the Justice Department's civil-rights division. Ms. King's letter was sent to Georgia Attorney General Thurbert Baker on Friday.

(…)Justice Department officials said the citizenship match has flagged 7,007 individuals as noncitizens but that many of those matches have been shown to be in error.

"Thousands of citizens who are in fact eligible to vote under Georgia law have been flagged," the Justice Department letter said.

Last month, we spotlighted a recently-passed Georgia law (SB 86) requiring voters to provide citizenship documentation when registering. That law also requires database matching, and we noted at the time that such systems routinely disqualify a high percentage of lawful voters – sometimes as high as 30%. Now we have proof that Georgia’s system would be no different, and the Justice Department acted accordingly.

Hopefully, the Justice Department will soon strike down SB 86 as well.