State investigators and a Democratic-backed group under investigation for allegedly fraudulent voter registration are working to extend the deadline Tuesday of a subpoena the group’s leaders have called “unnecessary, overly broad, unduly burdensome and harassing.”
The New Georgia Project had left open the possibility of the lawsuit, although they have pushed also for Secretary of State Brian Kemp to narrow his inquiry.
“What we want to understand is what we’ve been accused of and what we are responsible for,” said state House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams, D-Atlanta, who founded the registration group in November.
Abrams has identified fewer than 25 forms out of 85,000 submitted so far that are involved in the investigation. State officials, however, have repeatedly refused to give an exact number. National experts have said it is not unusual to have some forms questioned, and that fraud most often is the work of individuals and not part of a coordinated effort by an organization.
The group’s response to the original subpoena was legally due Tuesday, a day before Kemp is expected to lay out his case involving the group to the Georgia Election Board. The board called a special meeting at 3 p.m. Wednesday. It will be the first time Kemp has addressed the scope of the investigation he launched last week.
Among complaints he said he has received were applications with inaccurate or false information, applications completed or “forged” after phone conversations between voters and representatives of the group, and voters being told they had to re-register to vote.
Abrams and over a dozen civil rights and religious leaders have vocally questioned the timing of Kemp’s inquiry. She has also said the group had communicated frequently with Kemp’s office during the voter drive and had even pointed out problems with some forms that it had collected. State law requires those forms to be turned in anyway to local county registrars and vetted by the state office.
Twelve counties have reported complaints now included in the inquiry: Bartow, Butts, Cobb, Coweta, DeKalb, Effingham, Gwinnett, Henry, Muscogee, Tatnall, Terrell and Toombs.
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