ATLANTA (AP) - Georgia election officials say they've been asked to look into concerns by a group representing Asian Americans that hundreds of new voters are facing obstacles that could keep them from voting.
The Atlanta-based Asian American Legal Advocacy Center requested the review on Wednesday, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
Many of the voters are newly naturalized American citizens in Georgia who want to cast their first ballots in a U.S. election, officials with the group said.
The group maintains that some of the voters are missing from voting rolls, and that their registrations have apparently not been processed.
The secretary of state has received the request for intervention from the organization, said Jared Thomas, a spokesman for the Secretary of State's Office.
"Any allegations like this we take very seriously," Thomas said Wednesday.
It's not clear whether all Georgia counties met a state deadline late last week to process registration applications, the Journal-Constitution reported.
The registration process is necessary to get a voter onto state rolls, allowing elections officials to confirm they can vote. A second issue involves voters who got flagged in the application process or while trying to vote, the newspaper reported.
"These are people who want to vote," said Helen Kim Ho, executive director of the Asian American Legal Advocacy Center. "There seems to be a lack of commitment in getting new people and new citizens through the system."
A representative of the secretary of state's office was not immediately available for comment on the issue Thursday morning.
