More than 100,000 names will be removed from Georgia’s electoral rolls in order to “keep the state’s electoral files up to date,” the Georgian Foreign Minister said in a statement on Friday.
“Keeping Georgia’s electoral rolls up to date is critical to ensuring the integrity of our elections,” said Brad Raffensperger. “There is no legitimate reason to keep ineligible voters on the lists.”
The electoral files are “out of date and out of date”, according to the statement, in which Raffensperger made it a priority after the 2020 election to “continue with the list maintenance”.
The announcement follows this year’s signing of a new electoral law in Georgia, passed by Republican lawmakers after the GOP lost the presidency in November.
Aside from the regular monthly removal of voter records for convictions and deaths, this is the first major electoral cleanse since 2019.
“The 101,789 obsolete voter records being removed include 67,286 voter records linked to a national change of address form filed with the US Postal Service; 34,227 voter files in which election mail was returned to the sender; and 276 who have not had contact with election officials for at least five years, ”the statement said. “In each of these cases, in two parliamentary elections, the person had no contact with the Georgian electoral officials – either directly or through the Driver Services Department.”
Raffensperger was harshly criticized by members of his own party for maintaining Biden’s victory in Georgia and for refusing to help former President Donald Trump overturn the election results. He was convicted at the GOP Congress in Georgia earlier this month.
Raffensperger and his family have also received death threats since the election.
In addition to the “obsolete and obsolete” files, the Secretary of State’s office also removed “18,486 voter records from the dead based on information from the Georgian Office of Vital Records and the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), an interstate partnership of 30 states and the District of Columbia focused on keeping accurate electoral rolls, ”the statement said.
Raffensperger attacked former Democratic gubernatorial candidate and electoral activist Stacey Abrams.
“That’s why I fought and defeated Stacey Abrams in court in 2019 to remove nearly 300,000 obsolete voter records ahead of the November elections, and I will do so this year,” Raffensperger said.
After their defeat to Governor Brian Kemp, Abrams founded Fair Fight Action, a voting rights group that, according to the Atlanta Journal, has filed a lawsuit against Georgia’s removal of voter records for those who did not vote in the last election. Constitution.
Both federal and state laws require electoral officers to perform list maintenance for registration records if the individual has died or moved to a different address. In particular, Georgian law requires electoral officials to remove registration records that were inactive in two parliamentary elections and had no contact with electoral officials during that time.
A bipartisan state law passed in 2019 requires the state to issue at least two notices to individuals whose registrations can be canceled.
The Foreign Minister’s office published a list of current names that have been removed from the electoral roll. To view the list, Click here.