As the Nov. 5 election approaches, Oconee Board of Elections and Registration staff have finished logic and accuracy testing of voting machines, trained poll workers, mailed absentee ballots and prepared poll locations.
“Making sure the board has what they need, it does take time away from doing the election preparation,” Director Sharon Gregg said. “But when you’ve got such a great team, it makes it easier on you to be able to do everything you have to do to get ready for the election.”
However, there’s an added duty on that list.
A married couple from Oconee County has filed more than 300 voter challenges with the Oconee County Board of Elections since July, according to elections office documents.
Victoria Cruz and Stephen Aleshire said they filed the challenges to help the board of elections remove dead voters, people who have moved and other ineligible voters from its rolls.
“We are helping them; they don’t have time to do the kinds of research that is needed,” Cruz said. “They have so many things they have to take care of otherwise during an entire year, with or without an election.”
Why It’s Newsworthy: In the months leading up to the election, voter challenges have added to the election staff’s duties.“The timing has not been the best,” Board of Elections chairman Jay Hanley said. “But in a way, I do see the merits of it, because it is helping us with the list cleanup.“
Voter Challenges in Georgia by Grady Newsource
What are these Challenges?
The challenges stem from a new Georgia law, Senate Bill 189, which went into effect July 1. Part of the law allows Georgia voters to challenge other voters’ registrations.
Most of Cruz and Aleshire’s challenges are against people who have moved to another county or state but are still registered in Oconee County. They use public information, like property tax records, to see if someone is still living in Oconee.
Cruz originally submitted 228 challenges under Georgia code § 21-2-229. Cruz and Aleshire later submitted another 75 challenges under Georgia code § 21-2-230. The infographic to the right details the criteria for those different types of challenges.
So far, the board has only removed two voters from the rolls because they were registered at business addresses, not at residences.
The majority of the challenges were dismissed for lack of probable cause, but the board will hold a hearing on 67 of them at a special called meeting on Oct. 24.
Hanley said none of the challenged voters have responded so far. Board member Ken Davis said he does not expect any of the challenged voters to come forward at the Oct. 24 hearing.
Why are Voter Challenges Happening?
The Georgia Secretary of State’s office has a process that automatically cleans up the voter rolls every two years, but Hanley said that challenges “speed up the process a little bit.”
“That happens if the people don’t vote within two general elections,” Hanley said. “There’s a process that the state does for list maintenance, that they’re eventually taken off the list if they don’t vote.”
But Cruz said she thinks that process takes too long.
“They do place an undue reliance on what the Secretary of State does,” Cruz said. “With 40 million people moving every year, every other year is not enough, and so I think that’s why citizens and legislators realized after 2020 that citizens needed to get involved in this process.”
Voting rights groups like the Brennan Center for Justice have criticized S.B. 189, calling it an “election denial experiment.”
University of Georgia Political Science professor Charles Bullock said he thinks the change goes back to the election fraud claims made by former president Trump after the 2020 election.
“Donald Trump claims that this is a major problem, and his supporters in the legislature believe him,” Bullock said. “The legislature, which is very strongly Republican, very strongly pro Trump, has rewritten laws in Georgia to address concerns that the former president has raised.”
But Cruz and Aleshire said that there are no political motivations behind their challenges and that they just want to make sure any invalid registrations are removed from the voter rolls.
This is a bad year. I understand,” Cruz said. “It should be a cooperation, you know, and I’m sorry that in some counties it has turned into something worse.
Torin Smith is a senior majoring in journalism with certificates in sports media and news literacy.
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