The voting rights group Fair Fight plans to fight a Texas organization in court over its challenge to the eligibility of more than 364,000 voters to participate in Georgia’s U.S. Senate runoffs.
Fair Fight, founded by Democrat Stacey Abrams, announced it plans to file a lawsuit in federal court Wednesday to block an election watchdog group, True the Vote, from trying to disqualify voters from the runoffs by questioning their residency.
The lawsuit will allege that True the Vote is engaging in voter intimidation in violation of the Voting Rights Act.
“We will not allow out-of-state agitators to violate the law and disenfranchise lawful Georgia voters in an eleventh-hour, desperate attempt to create chaos, burden county boards, and tie up the election,” Fair Fight said in a statement. “Our message to True the Vote: Get out of Georgia and leave our voters alone.”
True the Vote has said it is following a process outlined in Georgia law that allows voters to challenge the eligibility of other voters in their counties. True the Vote partnered with Georgia Republican Party members to contest voters whose names showed up on U.S. Postal Service lists showing their addresses had changed.
“As expected, the left didn’t wait long to try and stop our efforts to ensure a free and fair election in the Georgia runoffs,” True the Vote said in a press release. “Our work here in Georgia is only the beginning of our efforts nationwide to restore faith and confidence in our election system.”
At least two county election boards have found probable cause to move forward with the voter challenges, Forsyth and Muscogee. Challenged voters in those counties will have to cast provisional ballots that wouldn’t be counted unless local election officials verify their residency.
Other counties have rejected the mass voter challenges, including Athens-Clarke, Cobb, DeKalb, Fulton and Gwinnett counties.
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