A new ProPublica report shows a small group of people challenged 89,000 Georgia voter registrations. According to the research by reporter Doug Bock Clark, six right-wing activists initiated the challenges.
Clark says Georgia’s SB 202, also known as the “Election Integrity Act of 2021,” made it possible for citizens to file unlimited challenges to other voters’ registrations.
“The key sentence that was inserted into the existing law about challenges explicitly says, ‘Anyone can challenge anyone else in their county, without any limit.,’” said Clark. “And this is a real transformation of the law, even though it’s only a few words added to it.”
Clark added that while laws like this can be helpful – for example, to remove a deceased relative from a voter log – Georgia’s wording of it has opened the door to taking advantage of registration challenges.
Of the six right-wing activists who challenged the thousands of Georgia registrations, Clark said five of the challengers were connected to organizations that contested the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.
