The Cobb County Board of Elections is considering passing along the costs of notifying voters whose eligibility is being challenged to the individuals making the challenges — which are often done by the thousands.
Eugene Williams, a Cobb resident who also challenged voter eligibility in 2022, last week challenged the registration of 2,472 voters, 107 of whom are listed as active. The remaining 2,365 are inactive voters, meaning they’re already on track for their registrations to be canceled.
Voters can be declared inactive under Georgia law when they appear to have moved out of state, or five years after they last voted or contacted election officials. Their registrations are then voided if they miss the next two general elections — a review process undertaken by the Secretary of State’s office.
The Board of Elections voted along party lines Monday to only consider challenges to voters labeled as active, meaning most of voters challenged will likely be dismissed.
Democratic board member Stacy Efrat said Fulton County’s policy does the same.
“It’s already a huge burden on the elections staff to have to deal with thousands and thousands of voters being challenged, and since the (inactive voters) are already being handled ... it just seems like a reasonable policy amendment,” Efrat said.
Republican member Debbie Fisher voted in opposition of changing the policy and said she thinks some counties have been “overzealous” in designing policies to discourage people from filing mass voter challenges.
“I just, for the record, think that’s probably not a good practice to put forward,” Fisher said. “I think everybody wants clean voter rolls.”
The board also discussed the possibility of charging the costs of mailing notifications of eligibility hearings to challengers.
Elections Director Tate Fall said the cost of notifying all 2,472 voters in this challenge is estimated to be $1,600, excluding labor.
Credit: Ben Hendren
Credit: Ben Hendren
Chairwoman Tori Silas compared the proposed practice with charging individuals the costs involved with obtaining and reviewing requests filed under the Georgia Open Records Act.
Attorney Daniel White said state law does not address whether boards can charge individuals to conduct challenges, and said the board could decide to do so in a future policy.
“These challenge sections were originally drafted back when they were anticipating ... a few challenges,” White said. “There’s nothing preventing — in the statute that I read — preventing the shifting of that cost to the person filing the challenge, especially given the numbers we’re seeing.”
Fisher questioned whether the board should charge people who bring the challenges because “the impetus is on this board to keep our voter rolls clean. It’s not on the citizens out there trying to assist,” she said.
Activists are expected to bring a wave of voter eligibility challenges seeking to disqualify voters after the state Legislature passed a new law this year which further empowers mass voter challenges.
“There are voters who do fall through the cracks, that are dead, that have created a little problem for themselves by committing a crime, and we do miss them,” Fisher said. “I don’t think anybody who provides a challenge is doing it to be nefarious. I believe they truly are doing it to clean up our voter rolls.”
There were 250,000 challenges filed in 2020 and over 100,000 since then, most of which have been dismissed by county election boards after many voters were verified as eligible.
The board scheduled a hearing on the voter eligibility challenges for Aug. 3.
