Georgia canceled the registration of 591,548 voters over the weekend, part of an ongoing round of maintenance to the state’s voting rolls.
The AJC Reports:
Each of the voters affected by the move had already been on the state’s “inactive” registration list. That means they had not voted, updated their voter registration information, filed a change of name or address, signed a petition or responded to attempts to confirm their last known address for at least the past three years.
None of the voters had had any contact with local election officials or the state since at least Sept. 16, 2014, according to the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office.
The date coincides with the early-voting period leading up to the midterm Nov. 4, 2014, general election. State and federal law requires that Georgia give voters at least two federal general election cycles before it can take action to remove voters from the rolls, as it did starting overnight Friday.
The effort was part of the state’s regular off-year maintenance of the rolls, which up until this weekend included about 6.9 million voters.
Georgia removed almost 732,800 voters in its previous round of rolls cleanup between 2014 and 2016, according to a recent report from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. Three-quarters of these voters were dropped because they had moved away.
This year’s effort, however, is coming at a fraught time for some civil rights advocates.
Georgia’s work to clean up its rolls unintentionally coincides with a request from the U.S. Justice Department to 44 states including Georgia asking how they remove voters from the rolls who should no longer be eligible to vote.
At the same time, a separate federal commission created by President Donald Trump to investigate unsubstantiated claims of “millions” of illegal votes cast in last year’s presidential election has also drawn ire over a query seeking personal information on state voters themselves, such as their addresses, dates of birth, party affiliations and voting histories.
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