At a rural voting location in Georgia’s January 2021 U.S. Senate runoff election, a young Hispanic woman who was new to voting found herself singled out.
After waiting in a long line, she was told her right to vote had been challenged and she would need to present more identifying information if she wanted her ballot to count.
The ordeal took hours. To her, it was confusing — she felt like the voting rights of “people of color were being challenged.” It left her feeling “very intimidated.”
Her story, which she testified to in federal litigation, was part of a coordinated campaign to target hundreds of thousands of voters — causing massive confusion just before the critical 2021 Senate runoff. This came weeks after record turnout by voters of color helped deliver Georgia for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
Here’s why Fair Fight sued True the Vote
True the Vote, a Texas-based group that spread Donald Trump’s Big Lie about his 2020 loss, compiled a list of 364,000 Georgia voters to challenge using unreliable postal records.
The group facilitated over 250,000 voter challenges, exploiting a Georgia law that lets any resident challenge an unlimited number of their neighbors’ right to vote. TTV recruited former Navy SEALs to patrol voting locations, offered a $1 million “bounty” for fraud tips and considered posting challenged voters’ names online.
Georgia’s challenge law dates back to 1908, when a Jim Crow–era “pure registration” law was passed to suppress Black political participation. Similarly, TTV’s challenges disproportionately targeted Black, brown and first-time voters. One Black Army veteran who was challenged likened it to those old tactics meant to discourage and exhaust voters into giving up.
In response, Fair Fight filed suit against True the Vote under Section 11(b) of the Voting Rights Act, arguing the group’s campaign constituted unlawful voter intimidation.
Judge deemed TTV’s data as unreliable and verging on ‘recklessness’
Credit: NYT
Credit: NYT
True the Vote’s data used to challenge voters was deeply flawed. It relied on the U.S. Postal Service’s National Change of Address database — a system USPS says comes with no quality guarantees. TTV’s own consultant admitted their process was so sloppy that two people with the same name could be flagged for a challenge, even with different middle initials.
Most challenges were rejected by local election boards — but if the goal was confusion and intimidation, then mission accomplished.
In 2024, a federal judge ruled that Fair Fight had not met the legal standard required to prove voter intimidation. But the judge made clear TTV’s data “utterly lacked reliability” and their tactics “verged on recklessness.”
Now, Fair Fight has appealed. The stakes are high: Can mass voter challenges designed to intimidate and overwhelm be held accountable under federal law? We hope to build a record to ensure every American’s right to vote is protected from the far-right’s new forms of voter suppression.
Voter challenges have become easier over the years in Georgia
At the May 13 appeal hearing, the panel’s three judges pressed True the Vote on whether their tactics amounted to attempted voter intimidation.
When TTV’s attorney called the appeal “open and shut,” Judge Adalberto Jordan quickly replied: “No, it’s not.” Members of the panel questioned whether the lower court had erred by failing to fully consider TTV’s attempt to intimidate voters.
Voter challenges are part of a larger voter suppression playbook. Nationwide, far-right lawmakers are pushing bills like the SAVE Act, which would require burdensome government documentation to prove citizenship in order to register to vote — and force states to conduct error-prone voter roll purges.
In 2021, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed Senate Bill 202, allowing unlimited voter challenges. Kemp said he was “frustrated” Democrats won in 2020 and “did something about it with SB 202.” In 2024, he signed SB 189, making voter challenges even easier.
Citizens should show up at the ballot box, court and in the community
Mass challenges are now happening in several other states. The playbook is obvious: use faulty data to challenge voters, push false narratives and chip away at trust in elections. Their goal is not fairness — it’s power.
The courts are central to their strategy. After courts weakened provisions of the Voting Rights Act, it has become much harder to hold bad actors accountable.
Fair Fight’s appeal is about ensuring laws protect voters from these schemes. If we don’t challenge them, they will only spread further.
We cannot sit on the sidelines. Read the facts. Show up. Engage with pro-voting groups like Fair Fight, that organize against attacks on our freedom and help Americans navigate this new era of bureaucratic voter suppression.
Our democracy is being tested. The only way to defend it is to keep showing up — at the ballot box, in court and in your community.
Credit: Lauren Groh-Wargo
Credit: Lauren Groh-Wargo
Lauren Groh-Wargo is chief executive officer of Fair Fight and a political strategist who managed Stacey Abrams’ campaigns for Georgia governor.
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