Oops: Group charging voting fraud admits mistake

By Steve Visser

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Charges of massive voting fraud in Atlanta's mayoral race fizzled Wednesday after a citizen group admitted that it blundered when it made the charge.

“I acknowledge we had a huge misunderstanding about the data we were working with,” said Erica Long, co-chair of  Citizens for Fair Atlanta Elections.  "I would not have raised the issue with the Secretary of State if I did not believe it was correct."

On Monday, Long's group hand-delivered a letter to the Secretary of State office saying that its review of  voting information from the Nov. 3  Atlanta election showed that  "a significant number of votes, 1,314, were cast from addresses that no longer exist."   The group then asked the office to determine whether ineligible voters cast ballots in the Dec. 1 run-off election in which Kasim Reed defeated Mary Norwood by 714 votes after Wednesday's recount to see if ineligible voters could have swayed the election.

On Wednesday, after The Atlanta Journal-Constitution had questioned how the group came up with its figures that conflicted with a report by the Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections, Long, a Norwood supporter, said  her group had misunderstood the data. The group mistakenly believed that the 1,314 registered voters who had addresses at now defunct housing projects and apartment complexes had actually voted when in fact few had.

Matt Carrothers, spokesman for the secretary of state, said his office gave the  group a compact disk that contained two data  files. One file was entitled "Atlanta voted" and the other larger  file had an abbreviated title that indicated it was a list registered voters.

The information in the two files is used to monitor which registered voters are participating in elections because the law requires that voters be moved to an "inactive list" if they don't vote or have contact with the elections' board in a four-year period.

Long, a Harvard-trained lawyer, said her group used the report that had all registered voters instead of just the ones who voted. Her husband, state Rep. Ralph Long, was the only elected official to endorse Norwood.

"That explains the discrepancy," she said.

Fulton County's election chief, Barry Garner, said his investigation on the questioned addresses showed that 33 people had voted and said his office would determine if they were eligible voters. So far his office found that seven of the 33 had filled out proper forms to reflect their change of address at the polls.  People who are determined not to live at the  listed address will be taken off the active voter list and won't be permitted to vote until they fill out the proper forms.

The citizens' group, however, still wants to see whether any ineligible voters cast ballots in the run-off.

"This is a serious issue and it goes beyond who becomes our next mayor," Long said. "We need to have confidence in the electoral process  regardless of whose side you are on.”