More than 100,000 names will be removed from Georgia’s voter registration rolls in an attempt to keep the state’s voter files “up to date,” Georgia’s secretary of state announced in a statement Friday.
“Making sure Georgia’s voter rolls are up to date is key to ensuring the integrity of our elections,” said Brad Raffensperger. “There is no legitimate reason to keep ineligible voters on the rolls.”
The voter files are “obsolete and outdated,” according to the statement, which says Raffensperger made it a priority after the 2020 election “to continue with the list maintenance process.”
The announcement follows this year’s signing of a new voter law in Georgia passed by Republican lawmakers following the GOP’s presidential loss in November.
Other than the regular monthly removals of voter files for felony convictions and death, this is the first major cleaning of the voter rolls since 2019.
“The 101,789 obsolete voter files that will be removed include 67,286 voter files associated with a National Change of Address form submitted to the U.S. Postal Service; 34,227 voter files that had election mail returned to sender; and 276 that had no-contact with elections officials for at least five years,” the statement said. “In each of these cases, the individual had no contact with Georgia’s elections officials in any way – either directly or through the Department of Driver Services – for two general elections.”
Raffensperger has received harsh criticism from members of his own party for upholding Biden’s win in Georgia and refusing to help former President Donald Trump overturn the election results. He was censured at the Georgia GOP convention earlier this month.
Raffensperger and his family have also received death threats since the election.
In addition to the “outdated and obsolete” files, the Secretary of State’s office also removed “18,486 voter files of dead individuals based on information received from Georgia’s Office of Vital Records and the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), an interstate partnership of 30 states and the District of Columbia focused on maintaining accurate voter rolls,” the statement says.
Raffensperger took a swipe at former Democratic gubernatorial candidate and voting rights activist Stacey Abrams.
“That is why I fought and beat Stacey Abrams in court in 2019 to remove nearly 300,000 obsolete voter files before the November election and will do so again this year,” Raffensperger said.
Following her loss to Gov. Brian Kemp, Abrams started Fair Fight Action, a voting rights organization that filed a lawsuit disputing, in part, Georgia’s removal of voter files for those who haven’t participated in recent elections, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Both federal and state laws require election officials to conduct list maintenance on registration records where the person has died or moved to a different address. Georgia law specifically requires election officials to remove registration records that have been in “inactive” status for two general elections and have had no contact with election officials during that time.
A bipartisan state law enacted in 2019 requires the state to issue at least two notices to people whose registrations are subject to cancellation.
The Secretary of State’s Office released a list of current names being purged from the voter rolls. To view the list, click here.
