Atlanta, GA—With just one week until Election Day, good government group Common Cause Georgia is calling on Secretary of State and gubernatorial candidate Brian Kemp to step down from his role overseeing state elections—including his own. Common Cause’s announcement comes on the heels of a call from former President Jimmy Carter on Sunday for Kemp to resign.

“We’re running out of time,” said Sara Henderson, Executive Director of Common Cause Georgia. “More than one million Georgians have already cast their votes in what’s expected to be a tight-as-a-tick election for Governor. Yet we still face the very real possibility that the person charged with certifying the election, the person who will say whether the election was conducted fairly and who will name the winner and loser, is a candidate for office himself.

“Brian Kemp is no average Secretary of State. He’s someone who’s overseen- for partisan advantage- the purging of hundreds of thousands of legitimate voters from the rolls, and who’s rejected an unprecedented number of ballots, disenfranchising tens of thousands of votes from people of color. Why has he done this? Perhaps it’s because- as he openly told an audience who attended his fundraiser- ‘if everybody exercises and uses their right to vote,’ he might not win his campaign for Georgia Governor.

“Many former Secretaries of State have run for governor and all have vacated their offices prior to the general elections of their gubernatorial campaigns. That partisan operatives can oversee enforcement of the rules that govern their own elections undermines fairness, and the appearance of fairness, in our elections and is another brick in the road to undermining confidence in election outcomes. He must resign immediately.”