Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced this week that his office plans on undertaking a major cleanup of the state’s voter rolls that will see more than 191,000 inactive voters stricken from the rolls.
“Georgia’s voter rolls are the cleanest in the nation,” Raffensperger said. “List maintenance efforts like this ensure the integrity of our elections.”
State elections law requires periodic voter roll cleanups to keep the state’s elections records up to date. Voters become ‘inactive’ after a five year period when they either do not – vote, update their registrations, or respond to mail from elections officials. Voters who have been placed in ‘inactive’ status then become eligible for removal from the rolls when they do not vote in two more consecutive general elections.
According to statistics from Raffensperger’s office, 45% of the 191,473 voters set for removal are those who filled out a national change of address forms – aka moved out of state. The other 55% are comprised of individuals whose statuses were set to ‘inactive’ because on top of not voting in the past two election cycles, they also were unable to receive election mail from the USPS because their addresses were marked as ‘undeliverable.’
Voters rights groups, including Fair Fight Action, founded by two-time gubernatorial candidate Stacy Abrams, were quick to call the removals a “voter purge” and an attempt at voter suppression.
Georgia undergoes voter registration cancellations every two years. 2023’s planned total of 191,000 eclipses 2021’s of roughly 101,000, but falls far short of 2019’s 287,000 and 2017’s whopping 534,000.
Georgians can check on their voter status by visiting www.mvp.sos.ga.gov.
