Election fraud hunters challenged 92,000 voter registrations in Georgia last year
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Most of their attempts failed, but they threatened election integrity by drowning election workers in a bureaucratic nightmare.
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Fair Fight is suing True the Vote, arguing that its mass voter challenges are discriminatory.
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Fraud vigilantism is becoming a national problem.
A militia of amateur voter fraud hunters challenged 92,000 Georgia voter registrations and 364,000 voters’ eligibility to vote in the Senate run-off last year. The vast majority of the challenges were unsuccessful; of the 92,000 registration challenges, just 2,208 voter registrations were removed by local officials at the hearings.
The fraud hunters were organized by True the Vote, a conservative organization bent on finding election fraud. They used public records to mine the voter rolls for potentially ineligible voter registrations before making mass written requests to the local commissioners in their county.
Data suggests that voters of color and younger Georgians may be disproportionately affected by mass challenges. In Cobb County, both demographic groups were overrepresented in the challenges.
In response, Fair Fight is suing in federal court over the massive, coordinated challenge to the eligibility of 364,000 people to vote in the Senate runoff in 2021, arguing that such mass challenges are discriminatory. The judge will have to decide whether True the Vote, the top organizer of sweeping voter challenges, went too far and whether or not it intimidated voters from the polls during its fraud witch hunt.
Voters line up to cast their ballots on Nov. 26, 2022 in Decatur, Ga.
Justin Sullivan, Getty Images
Why Is This Happening?
Baseless claims of election fraud have increased dramatically since Georgia’s 2021 sweeping election law went into effect. Senate Bill 202, as it is known, codified that county residents could make unlimited requests to election officials, asking them to remove voters from the rolls if the challengers believed they were ineligible. The law mandated that county officials must conduct a hearing on those challenges within 10 business days.
A Bureaucratic Nightmare
The massive influx of baseless challenges created a bureaucratic nightmare for busy local officials trying to run smooth elections.
In August 2022, VoterGA, a group that claims widespread election fraud and corruption, worked with local residents to challenge the registrations of more than 37,500 voters in Gwinnett County — nearly 6% of the county’s voter rolls.
Gwinnett County’s Elections Supervisor Zach Manifold said he had six to 10 people working long hours, frequently 60 to 70 hours a week, for nearly a month to evaluate each challenge.
At the end of the month, the Board of Commissioners rejected the challenge as a whole.
"We're already not in a really great climate to run elections, and once you start throwing really large administrative burdens — it's just another piece on the puzzle that makes it harder," said Zach Manifold, elections supervisor in Gwinnett County, which received more than 47,000 voter challenges last year.
Vigilantes Nationwide
Voter fraud vigilantism is a growing problem across the United States as private citizens convinced of voter fraud — despite ample evidence it does not exist — have begun to take matters into their own hands. In Arizona, armed members of a right-wing group patrolled and monitored drop boxes, while in New Mexico, volunteers with an “audit force” went door-to-door seeking to check the voter rolls.
Biggest Challenges in 2022
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A Forsyth County resident filed one of the biggest challenges of the year in October, challenging 15,787 voters — about 6% of the county’s voter rolls — in one fell swoop. He said postal service data indicated problems with the voters’ addresses. The commissioners were skeptical, and asked whether he had tried to filter the registrations to weed out college students or military members who were forwarding their mail for those reasons. He had not, the minutes of the hearing indicate. The challenges were dismissed.
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A Cobb County resident challenged more than 60 students at Kennesaw State University who used a general college address instead of a specific dorm address on their registrations, along with dozens of registrations that appeared to lack an apartment number. The county dismissed the challenges.
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In November, a Forsyth County woman challenged the registration of the previous owner of her home, saying the person was living in Texas and improperly using her address in Georgia, according to minutes of the hearing that considered the challenge. The challenge was upheld.