Local officials working to clear new voter forms as inquiry continues

Aug. 2010 — 10,067 applications processed

Election officials in Fulton and Muscogee counties — the two Georgia counties with the biggest number of pending voter applications — said Thursday they are working to clear thousands of registration forms turned in by the New Georgia Project ahead of the state’s Oct. 6 deadline.

The Georgia Secretary of State’s Office, meanwhile, has begun to spot-check more than 51,000 applications the Democratic-backed group claims have languished in the system. It says dozens of those forms have been properly recorded and added to voter rolls.

Others, however, appear to be caught up in the state’s verification process — which in Georgia is handled by local elections officials in each county. Some of those officials said they are working hard to catch up with a “significant” increase in new voter applications before this year’s midterm elections.

That work will be front and-center in the remaining three weeks Georgians have to register, as a rare investigation launched last week by Secretary of State Brian Kemp continues.

State investigators said Wednesday they have confirmed 25 of those forms as forgeries. They labeled another 26 forms as “suspicious.” Their inquiry, which involves complaints from 13 counties, could take months to complete.

The investigation has been been derided by civil rights and religious leaders as a partisan attempt at voter intimidation. National experts say it is not unusual to have some problematic forms and that fraud most often is the work of individuals.

Kemp, a Republican, said Thursday that he is obligated to investigate any case of possible voter registration fraud. He pushed back against the accusation that he targeted the group, saying his office merely investigated complaints raised by county registrars. “These complaints were investigated in the same manner that any and all complaints received by this Office have been handled in the past,” he said in a statement.

He said the investigation is not over and vowed he would “never retreat from that constitutional duty and obligation (to) ensure secure, accessible and fair elections.”

State House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams, D-Atlanta, who founded the New Georgia Project last year, also pledged to "keep asking" questions "until these voters are on the rolls."

It will take time to get answers.

About 6,000 applications in Fulton alone still need verification before they can be cleared, although county Registration Chief Shauna Dozier said that number may include forms not submitted by the group. The county has hired 25 temporary workers to help process the applications, with plans to hire another 3 people in coming days.

Additionally, some 7,000 of the more than 34,000 voter applications submitted by the New Georgia Project to Fulton County were turned in to the wrong county. Fulton officials have spent the last several weeks trying to determine which county each of those applications should go to.

In Muscogee County, elections director Nancy Boren said the county has reviewed 11,000 applications and has another 2,000 to review and process. That volume, Boren said, was “higher than normal for a midterm election, and I’ve been here 19 years.”

County officials said the review process can be stymied by incomplete or illegible forms. With those forms, the county will send a letter seeking more information and must, by law allow 40 days for an applicant to respond.

Muscogee's Boren said counties will keep processing applications after Oct. 6 as long as the initial form was received by the deadline. Georgia voters can also register online via the secretary of state's website (sos.ga.gov) or using free "GA Votes" mobile apps for both Apple and Android operating systems.