Fulton County may have more than 1,200 registered voters with empty lots for addresses, but that hasn't impacted any recent elections, a key county official told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
"It appears that none of those people voted," Registration and Elections Board Vice Chair Stan Matarazzo said, "so that's a good sign."
Detractors, however, want proof. The county plans to purge ineligible voters from its rolls, and the clampdown has raised questions about the integrity of the elections process, as well as the prospect of disenfranchising low-income, minority voters, during a busy campaign season.
State Sen. Vincent Fort, D-Atlanta, called on the county to release records of names and addresses in question, charging that incompetence could cause legitimate voters to be turned away on election days.
Attorney Erica Long, who challenged the rolls after Mary Norwood's narrow loss to Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed in 2009, said the bad addresses point to holes in Fulton's elections process.
"We have instances of Fulton County government not functioning well," said Long, wife of state Rep. Ralph Long, D-Atlanta, "and this is in line with that."
Prompted by Georgia Secretary of State's Office investigation, the county sent 2,400 letters earlier this month to addresses that matched demolition records. About half garnered responses, including residents of the Atrium at College Town, a public housing high-rise for seniors.
Elections Director Sam Westmoreland apologized, but the error opened up his department to harsh criticism from Fort.
Matarazzo, one of the elections board's Republican Party appointees, is firing back, saying the department is following a process laid out by state law to clean up voter rolls. Staff members have visited addresses to make sure demolition records are accurate, he said.
Though staffers have assured him that none of the 1,200 voted recently, he could not say how far back that's the case. Fulton's elections department hasn't responded to questions about votes from the 1,200 possibly cast in prior elections, and the Secretary of State's Office declined to comment, citing an ongoing investigation.
Norwood lost the 2009 runoff by 714 votes. Long, a Norwood supporter and co-chair of the now-disbanded Citizens for Fair Atlanta Elections, complained to the state that 1,314 ballots had been cast from non-existent addresses.
The group later retracted the claim. It turned out the 1,314 were only registered at defunct housing projects and apartment complexes. During the last two decades, the Atlanta Housing Authority razed most of its public housing stock.
An investigation at the time found less than 30 possible illegal votes.Norwood said she spoke to both former Secretary of State Karen Handel and her successor, Brian Kemp, about the problem.
"I did not have enough information then, nor do I have enough now, to say that was my election," she said. "It's one issue if you're on the rolls, and it's another if you actually voted in the election."
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