ATLANTA — More than 27,000 Georgians are about to receive notices that they could be removed from the state’s voter rolls if they don’t respond to those letters.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger told Channel 2 investigative reporter Mark Winne that this is the final phase of an effort to clean up Georgia’s voter list.
So far, the state has canceled voting registrations for more than 478,000 inactive Georgians.
“We have identified 27,450 voters that have moved out of Georgia,” Raffensperger said.
“Is this about voter integrity?” Winne asked Raffensperger.
“It’s absolutely about voter integrity,” Raffensperger said.
Raffensperger says driver’s license records and information from the Electronic Registration Information Center database, or ERIC, in which 25 states share voter information, are driving the final phase of a months-long effort to clean up the list of eligible Georgia voters.
“We give people 40 days to respond, and if they don’t respond, that’s when they are either moved to inactive, depending on what their status was before, or they’re removed from the list,” Raffensperger said.
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Raffensperger said many of the 27, 450 are registered to vote in two states, mostly because folks just forgot to un-register here in Georgia.
“But do you have double voting from people registered in two states sometimes?” Winne asked Raffensperger.
“Last year, I think we had less than 10, but that does happen. So that’s someone who knows they’re registered in two states. Typically, it’s a state not too far away, and they actually double-vote. And that’s malicious, and they know what they’re doing,” Raffensperger said.
“We do not take issue with regular list maintenance, participation in the ERIC system, if someone’s moved to another state and re-registered. We do take issue with removing voters from the voter rolls because politicians think they’re not voting enough,” said Democratic Party of Georgia chair Charlie Bailey.
An earlier phase of the voter list audit led to the removal of hundreds of thousands of people who haven’t voted in Georgia in two federal election cycles and didn’t respond to mailings about their status.
“We had 471,000 that came off the first list,” Raffensperger said.
Raffensperger said another 218,951 people have been placed on inactive status because they have had no contact with election officials for two federal election cycles, and they will get notices if they don’t vote in two more. They will be removed if they don’t respond to the mailings.
“The problem is Republican politicians in this state saying they know better than voters, and because voters aren’t voting frequently enough for their taste, they’re gonna remove them from the voter rolls. That’s wrong,” Bailey said.
“You do not dispute that the Secretary of State’s office is complying with the law as it stands in Georgia?” Winne asked Raffensperger.
“It’s a bad law, but it is the law,” Bailey said. “They’re removing Republicans and independents as well.”
“Having an up-to-date list is good for election management, but the other thing it does is it builds voter trust. The voters can trust that your list is accurate. It gives them confidence in the system,” Raffensperger said.
State elections director Blake Evans said investigations are underway into those who double-voted last year, and if the allegations bear out, those cases will be referred to local district attorneys for possible prosecution.
He said this month, a woman surrendered to the Columbia County Jail in a case involving allegations she voted in the 2020 election in both Maryland and Georgia.
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