The Democratic Party of Georgia, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), and Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DCSC) filed one suit (PDF), which names Secretary Brad Raffensperger, among others, in response to that state’s absentee procedures. Democrats also filed a lawsuit challenging the state’s ballot ordering statute, which they said gives Republicans an “arbitrary and unconstitutional advantage in their placement on general election ballots.”
According to information from the DCCC, the absentee voting procedures in Georgia “lack enforceable standards and disenfranchise voters who cast absentee ballots.”
"Despite a series of reforms following the 2018 elections, Georgia has not standardized how election officials notify voters that their ballots were rejected,” according to information from the DCCC. “The lack of standards for both time and method mean voters are not given sufficient notice to correct or ‘cure’ their ballots—and their votes are not counted.”
Additionally, the ACLU of Georgia took issue with the state’s effort to purge its voting rolls of inactive voters, claiming it found “discrepancies” in the list of those to be removed. According to the group, the list was supposed to include voters who missed the last two general elections, but the ACLU said it found “a number of citizens documented to have voted in the November 2018 elections” on the list. The ACLU sent an open records request in order to determine the voting history and other documentation related to 70 people it claims actually voted in the 2018 election.
“The voter registration of one Georgia citizen canceled in error is one citizen too many,” said Andrea Young, executive director of the ACLU of Georgia. “We call on the Secretary of State to stop removing citizens from the voter rolls and focus on serving the citizens of Georgia by ensuring access to the ballot and free and fair elections.”
However, an independent analysis from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution found there “aren’t many obvious errors in Georgia’s cancellation list.”
From Twitter
Adam Schiff @AdamSchiff
Ahead of the 2018 elections, Georgia purged hundreds of thousands of voters from the rolls and held back applications for tens of thousands more. Now, with two Senators on the ballot in 2020, they’re doing it again. This is why we must keep fighting to defend voting rights.
In the days leading up to Election Day, Raffensperger’s office pointed out its “routine and legally required” voter purge yielded a 4% reduction in the roll and that is on par with other states facing outmigration like Nevada, Colorado, Minnesota, Illinois, Arizona, Vermont and Maryland.
According to the Secretary of State’s Office, the Georgia General Assembly passed a law this year requiring officials to send personalized notices to the last known address of those about to be removed from the voter rolls due to an address change. Raffensperger said that information will also be posted online. “Election security is my top priority,” he said. “Accurate and up-to-date voter rolls are vital to secure elections, but at the same time I want to ensure that anyone potentially affected by this routine process has notice and opportunity to update their information. That is why my office is releasing the full list to ensure that people who are still eligible voters can update their information.”
The procedures are laid out under the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, a federal law signed by then-President Bill Clinton, according to the secretary’s office. Additional laws were also passed in Georgia the next year under a Democratic-led General Assembly and signed by a Democratic Governor.