LISTEN: The Georgia State Election Board will investigate why challenges to voter rolls were denied in eight different Georgia counties. GPB's Grant Blankenship reports from Macon-Bibb County.
Georgia’s State Election Board will investigate why and how challenges to voter rolls lodged at the county level earlier this year were denied.
In a partisan vote, the SEB greenlit investigations of local boards of election and how they handled voter challenges in eight counties: Macon-Bibb, DeKalb, Fulton, Athens-Clarke, Jackson, Gwinnett, Forsyth and Cobb.
Bibb County GOP chair David Sumrall challenged just under 800 registrations in May on the cusp of the May primary. The bulk of his challenges were of people already on the inactive voter list and on their way to being purged through the longstanding process overseen by the secretary of state’s office. Those challenges were denied.
“The argument was that you had to — according to the [National Voter Registration Act] — you had to have a signed document from the voter requesting that their name be taken off the roll,” Sumrall told the State Election Board.
That is not something specified by the state law under which Sumrall and others brought their challenges, Senate Bill 189.
“So the board is really, I think, in Bibb County, waiting for somebody, a judge or this board, to tell them what constitutes a valid challenge and whether the federal law trumps the state law,” Sumrall said. “If so, then our state law is virtually worthless.”
The failed challenges brought before the SEB Monday numbered in the tens of thousands.
After hearing similar stories from people like Sumrall in other counties, SEB member Janice Johnston asked that the heads of local election boards be invited to explain themselves to the SEB.
“So that we can better understand what their intentions are,” Johnston said. “Or how they're not following Georgia code, whether they've taken it upon themselves to write their own rules and regulations and laws in spite of what Georgia code says.”
Last week, Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr sent a memo to the State Election Board informing it that the election rules the board is in the midst of approving are not supported by state law.
The SEB could have asked the secretary of state’s office, which is also critical of the new rule-making, to further investigate the voter challenges but instead chose board Executive Director Mike Coan.
Until Coan finishes his investigation, the board cannot compel local election officials to explain their work.
Whether officials will take up the invitation to speak at the next meeting of the board on Oct. 8 is unclear.
SEB member Sara Tindal Ghazal said the October meeting will fall after the start of early voting, when local boards of election will have begun their election year work in earnest and may not have people to spare for a trip to the Capitol.
Elsewhere, a lawsuit brought on Tuesday argues that SB 189 unfairly discriminates against homeless people and people registered at nonresidential addresses.
