| December 23, 2020 03:21 PM
A Texas voting rights organization is working with Georgia Republicans to challenge the voter eligibility of more than 364,000 people who may have moved, potentially disqualifying their ballots in the state's Senate runoff elections.
"True the Vote announced today it is submitting 364,541 Elector Challenges on behalf of Georgia voters representing all 159 counties," the organization wrote in a press release.
An elector challenge is a "unique feature in Georgia Law" that allows any voter to "challenge the eligibility of any other voters in his or her county if probable cause exists to show that the challenged voter does not meet the qualifications legally required to cast a ballot."
True the Vote said its analysis of the U.S. Postal Service's National Change of Address system and Georgia voter registers identified "124,114 registered voters who no longer reside in the county of record" and another 240,427 who no longer reside in the state at all.
"Ongoing debates about the November election throughout the country have Americans focused intently on improving the integrity of our elections and restoring the faith of voters. Today, we assisted concerned Georgia voters in taking a stand for the sanctity of every legal vote," True the Vote Founder Catherine Engelbrecht said in a statement. "It is our hope that this historic challenge marks the beginning of the great awakening of American voters to serve our democracy by getting involved in the process."
The organization has submitted challenges in every Georgia county and gained steam in Forsyth County outside of Atlanta and Columbus's Muscogee County — which together have already filed challenges forcing more than 9,000 voters to use a provisional ballot when they appear to vote and prove their residency, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
An elector challenge does not automatically remove a voter's name from the registry. If voters whose eligibility has been challenged are able to provide evidence of their residency, their provisional ballots will be counted in the Jan. 5 election.
Following the 2020 general election, which involved two recounts, lawsuits, and violent threats against election officials and their families, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger made a number of appeals to restore confidence in the state's election system.
Earlier this month, Raffensperger announced Georgia would conduct a "forward-looking" statewide audit of mail-in ballot signatures that would inform how the state election board moved forward with conducting elections.
On Wednesday, Raffensperger told the Georgia Assembly that he supported eliminating no-excuse absentee ballot requests after 15 years despite affirming the "vast majority of claims" alleging voter fraud "are simply unfounded," according to Fox News. Asked to explain his stance, Raffensperger said that "it's harder to provide confidence" in the electoral process without stricter policies.
Raffensperger's office did not respond to the Washington Examiner's request for comment, but the secretary of state told True the Vote that he supported "any effort that builds faith in our election system that follows the proper legal procedure."
Other voting rights groups have argued that the move is an attempt to disenfranchise voters, calling True the Vote's reliance on NCAS data "inexact and unverified."
American Civil Liberties Union for Georgia attorney Sean Young called the move "one of the oldest tricks in the voter suppression playbook."
"It’s unsurprising that political operatives would pull this out in the middle of a contentious election,” Young told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "There’s no shortage of conspiracy theories in this election. Mass voter challenges attempt to make those conspiracies real and disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of voters in the process."
The Brennan Center for Justice, a New York University policy institute, said relying on change-of-address lists "isn't a reliable way to cull voter registration lists without additional information." The Brennan Center pointed to 2,203 voters on True the Vote's list of challenges who participated in the Nov. 3 election, which means they showed a photo ID and have already proven their residency.