Georgia cancels nearly 471,000 voter registrations

About 5,500 eligible Georgia voters saved their registrations before they were canceled by responding to notification letters or verifying their information online. An additional 800 voters reached out to election officials to cancel themselves or have died. Initially, almost 478,000 voter registrations were planned for cancellation.

State Election Director Blake Evans said the cancellations, required by state law every two years, ensure Georgia has “the cleanest voter rolls in the country.”

Credit: Miguel Martinez

Credit: Miguel Martinez

“It does give voters confidence that our voter lists are accurate. We know that many voters move every single year,” Evans said.

The cancellations shrink Georgia’s number of registered voters from 8.44 million to less than 8 million.

Voting rights organizations oppose mass cancellations because they include some eligible voters, such as those who haven’t participated in elections for several years but remain Georgia residents. Conservatives generally support cancellations as a way to prevent the possibility that old registrations could be used to cast fraudulent ballots.

Under Georgia law, voters become “inactive” when they appear to have moved. They can be canceled if they miss the next two general elections.

Georgia also has a “use it or lose it” law that cancels voters after roughly 10 years without casting a ballot or updating their registrations.

More than half of the voter registration removals were identified by the Electronic Registration Information Center. A 24-state organization, ERIC collects records when voters get a driver’s license, register to vote or fill out a change-of-address form with the U.S. Postal Service. Republican state legislators attempted to withdraw Georgia from ERIC earlier this year but the bill didn’t pass.

U.S. Census data shows about 20,000 people leave Georgia every month, said Amy Spring, a Georgia State University demographer and sociologist.

But Georgia is still growing, she said. About 26,000 people move into Georgia monthly.

“We are a pretty mobile society. If that’s one of the arguments (for cancellations), that people move a lot, that’s true actually,” Spring said. “But mobility has been slowing down, however. In the U.S., people aren’t moving as much as they used to.”

While this year’s cancellations are large — 6% of Georgia’s registered voters — they fall short of the state’s record-setting removal of 534,000 registrations in July 2017.

Election officials began the cancellation process last month by mailing notifications to voters whose registrations were jeopardized. Eligible voters then had 40 days to salvage their registrations by responding to the notifications or updating their registration information on the state’s My Voter Page at mvp.sos.ga.gov.

Canceled voters aren’t allowed to participate in elections unless they reregister to vote. Georgia has one of the earliest registration deadlines in the country, 29 days before election day.

By the numbers: Georgia registration cancellations

178,800: Voters who appear to have moved based on voter registration and driver’s license data gathered by ERIC’s “Cross-state Movers Report.”

85,400: Voters who appear to have moved based on National Change of Address information provided to ERIC by the U.S. Postal Service.

104,300: Voters identified by the secretary of state’s office as having not participated in elections or had contact with election officials for at least nine years.

102,300: Voters whose election mail was undeliverable.