Judge OK’s Purge of Georgia’s Voter Rolls

County election offices in Georgia are now in the process of purging their voter rolls of voters who have not cast ballots in several elections.

On Monday, a federal judge allowed Georgia to do a mass purge of its voting rolls, according to a report by the Associated Press.

The purge began Monday evening.

Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in October released a list of over 313,000 voters whose registrations were at risk of being canceled, about 4% of the state’s total registered voters.

Notices were mailed in November giving those voters 30 days to respond in order to keep their registration valid.

In Franklin County, Elections Supervisor Gina Kesler said about 525 notices were sent out to people who had not voted in the last two elections.

Of that, she said only about 25 voters responded with updated information.

The rest, she said were purged from the voter rolls on Tuesday.

A non-profit group in Atlanta, Fair Fight Action, which was founded by Democrat Stacey Abrams, had filed an emergency request Monday morning asking the court to halt the purge of some voters, arguing just because someone has voted in several years doesn’t mean they should be removed from the voter rolls.

But attorney Bryan Tyson, representing the secretary of state, told the judge that the window for voter maintenance is narrow because it cannot be done within 90 days before an election, which is why it’s generally done in off years.

If it’s not completed by later this month 90 days before the presidential primaries on March 24, it cannot be done until 2021 because next year has no 90-day periods without elections, he said.

The voter maintenance program is already running and if it were stopped Monday before it has reached the end, it would have be completed manually, introducing the possibility of human error, he said.

Tyson assured the judge that if people are removed and the judge later decides they should not have been, their registrations can be reinstated within 24 to 48 hours.

Once he was convinced of that, the Judge allowed the purge to continue, but said he wants to hear arguments from both sides today about why the voters in question should or should not be removed.