CLC Comment in Response to Georgia State Board of Election Proposal to Supercharge Frivolous Mass Challenges

Public comment submitted in response to Proposed Rule 186.1-6-.07. The proposal, if promulgated, will prevent county election boards from charging fees associated with processing mass challenges. Georgia has become a focal point in a nationwide, partisan effort to purge voter rolls using state voter eligibility challenge laws to challenge other citizens' right to vote with insufficient evidence. A small group of partisan challengers in Georgia have submitted mass voter challenges using databases of publicly available data that are frequently incomplete or out of date, leading to false positives that require voters to either attend a time consuming hearing to defend their registration or deter them from voting entirely. This rule will weaken any guardrails in place that would limit the use of challenge laws to cases when members of the public have personal or reliable information that a particular voter is ineligible to vote.