ATLANTA – Georgia counties are systematically denying mass voter challenges brought by citizen activists instead of investigating them as the law requires, State Election Board Executive Director Mike Coan said Tuesday.
The Republican-controlled board instructed Coan last month to look into how challenges are being handled in eight counties and report back with his findings. The list of counties included Athens-Clarke, Bibb, Cobb, DeKalb, Forsyth, Fulton, Gwinnett, and Jackson counties.
“The challengers by and large have more sophisticated technology than our election departments. That’s where the problem is,” Coan told board members during a daylong meeting at the state Capitol. “Thousands of voter challenges have been dismissed arbitrarily. We need to address these things.”
Coan said local election officials are reluctant to investigate voter challenges for fear of being sued by Georgians removed from voter rolls.
Citizen watchdogs have become much more active bringing voter challenges in Georgia since the 2020 election. While Republicans say the mass voter challenges activists have been filing are aimed at ensuring election integrity, Democrats say they’re targeting heavily Democratic counties to get Democratic voters off the rolls.
“There are people who are sore losers who have brought frivolous challenges in Democratic counties,” said state Rep. Saira Draper, D-Atlanta. “That’s a nakedly partisan ploy.”
Daniel White, a lawyer representing the Cobb County Board of Elections, said counties were able to process voter challenges in the days when fewer were filed.
“The law has not been updated for people bringing 2,000 or 3,000 challenges at a time,” he said. “The legislature needs to deal with it.”
White accused Coan and the board of trying to “set a narrative” that counties are mishandling voter challenges rather than seriously investigating complaints.
But board member Janelle King, one of the Republicans on the board, denied playing partisan politics with the voter rolls. She said the counties the board asked Coan to investigate were based on complaints from citizens attending board meetings.
“I will not allow anybody to stand up here and mischaracterize what we’re doing,” she said.
Board Vice Chair Janice Johnston said the problem of voter rolls bloated with the names of voters who have died, moved out of the county where they registered, or moved out of state is real. Both statewide and in some counties, there are more registered voters than the voting-age population, she said.
Mark Davis, an election data specialist, said his research from 2020 showed 35,230 Georgia voters who had moved to another county cast ballots in their previous county, a felony offense. He suggested Georgia lawmakers enact a bill modeled after a Virginia law requiring residents to update their driver’s licenses after moving to another jurisdiction. Most Georgians register to vote through the state Department of Driver Services.
“The way to fix this problem is helping voters not become unqualified voters in the first place,” Davis said.
Johnston asked Coan to prepare a written report the board could use to develop uniform guidelines for handling voter challenges and recommend legislation to the General Assembly.