The State Election Board opened an investigation Monday into how eight county election boards handled thousands of challenges to voter registrations.
The board vote came after activists from across the state expressed concerns that county-level election officials had dismissed almost all their challenges since Georgia’s latest voter challenge law — Senate Bill 189 — went into effect July 1.
In a 3-0 vote, the State Election Board approved an investigation by Executive Director Mike Coan into Athens-Clarke, Bibb, Cobb, DeKalb, Forsyth, Fulton, Gwinnett and Jackson counties’ elections management of voter challenges.
Marci McCarthy, chair of the DeKalb County Republican Party, said a lawsuit that conservative activist William Henderson and the DeKalb County Republican Party filed last week seeks to force the county election board to consider three batches of challenges submitted by Henderson.
The lawsuit, filed in the DeKalb County Superior Court, says the election board is legally obligated to consider the challenges Henderson submitted last month.
“We cannot have voters disenfranchised due to this negligence and the unlawful actions of DeKalb County,” McCarthy told the State Election Board. “Election laws are in place for a reason, and they must be enforced consistently to maintain our public confidence in our elections.”
An Atlanta Journal-Constitution analysis found that metro Atlanta counties have rejected more than 45,000 voter eligibility challenges since July.
State Election Board member Janice Johnston said she thought challengers brought forth valid evidence for county election boards to consider and that they could be ignoring evidence without adequately considering it.
“It appears that there is some sort of process going on with blanket refusals to even accept a challenge or investigate a challenge,” Johnston said.
The DeKalb election board adopted a resolution at its September meeting saying it would not consider any challenges within 90 days of an election. The resolution referenced a federal statute mandating voter rolls be cleaned no later than 90 days before a federal election.
Another state statute requires county boards to pause considering new challenges within 45 days of an election.
A separate lawsuit filed by two conservative vote challengers — Jason Frazier and Earl Ferguson — sought to force the Fulton election board to act on recent voter eligibility challenges.
The lawsuit submitted to the U.S. District Court in Atlanta said Fulton violated state and federal law by not acting on recent voter challenges in a timely fashion and failing to keep clean voter rolls. The duo’s attorney withdrew the lawsuit last week.
State laws passed in the wake of the 2020 presidential election allow any registered voter to challenge an unlimited number of voters in the same county. Conservative activists have used these laws to lodge over 350,000 voter challenges since 2020 and an additional 45,000 across four metro Atlanta counties since July. County election boards dismiss a majority of challenges.
Conservative vote challengers seek to purge voter rolls of outdated registrations, saying they could be used as a source of voter fraud.
But left-leaning advocates fear these state statutes could disenfranchise eligible voters and say that instead, registration cancellations should be made following the state’s routine process of list maintenance in removing voters.
Multiple investigations, recounts and court proceedings have disproved allegations of widespread voter fraud fueled by former President Donald Trump.
Following the vote for an investigation, the board invited the county-level election officials to the State Election Board’s October meeting.
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