Georgia officials seek to remove 102,000 voters from rolls

TIL Desk/World/Atlanta/ Georgia’s secretary of state is making public a list of nearly 102,000 voters who will be removed from the rolls unless they act to preserve their registration.

Republican Brad Raffensperger announced the list Friday, part of an every-other-year bid to remove voters who may have died or moved away. The state has about 7.8 million voters and his office said the removals include about 67,000 voters who submitted a change of address form to the US Postal Service, and about 34,000 voters who had election mail returned.

Voter purges in Georgia became a hot-button issue during the 2018 governor’s race between Democrat Stacey Abrams and Republican Brian Kemp. Secretary of state before being elected governor, Kemp oversaw aggressive voter purges during his tenure.

More than 1.4 million voter registrations were cancelled in Georgia between 2012 and 2018. In the current purge, election officials said, cancellation notices will be mailed and those who respond within 40 days will have their registration switched back to active. Anyone who is removed could register again. On a monthly basis, the secretary of state been removing voters who were convicted of felonies or who died.