Georgia Democrats should fight back by challenging conservative voter rolls

A conservative activist group is challenging swing state Democratic voter rolls in an orchestrated fashion. As usual, Black voters are in the crosshairs, all in an effort to assist Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. The strategy seeks to raise doubts about the integrity of voter registrations and create undue obstacles to the ballot.

The group, True the Vote, is engaged in a new version of an old tactic meant to stifle the Black vote, among others. This election year, with the upcoming primary, Georgia Democrats should consider responding in kind. 

The practice is officially known as “voter caging,” which the Brennan Center for Justice defines as “a notoriously unreliable means of calling the voter rolls into question and can lead to unwarranted purges or challenges of eligible citizens. When it is targeted at minority voters (as it often is, unfortunately), it is also illegal.”

The practice is relatively inexpensive to implement, hidden from public view and relies on the nuances of state and federal law. It can work to frustrate voters in a number of ways: the successful removal of registration for petty reasons, or the discouragement of voters through fear of legal consequences, or the disruption of easy voting practices. 

In 2021, during the Senate runoff election in Georgia, True the Vote challenged the registration of 360,000 voters. Judge Steven Jones of the the Northern District of Georgia ruled earlier this year that the practice did not amount to the illegal intimidation of voters. He concluded that “there is no evidence that Defendants’ actions caused (or attempted to cause) any voter to be intimidated, coerced, or threatened in voting.”

The decision has emboldened conservative activists to question Democratic voter rolls in swing states like Georgia. “We, unfortunately, are preparing for the onslaught of significantly more voter challenges by certain groups attempting to remove voters from the voter roll ahead of the November general election,” bemoaned Karli Swift of the DeKalb County Board of Elections.

The practice falls outside of the more brutish methods of disrupting voters, which are illegal. The Georgetown University Law Center details such activities as including violent behavior at the polling site, confronting voters in military clothing, spreading false information about the voting process, brandishing firearms, disrupting voting lines and aggressively questioning voters.

In Georgia, the emerging campaign by conservative activists will force Black voters to play defense, no doubt. But perhaps the time has come to consider playing offense as well? That means running a counter-campaign to question the voter rolls in conservative districts. Republicans need to understand that the shenanigans that can come around can also go around. 

The conservative campaign is unfortunate, because Georgia was a leader among southern states in voter registration best practices — despite Trump’s false accusations of rigged voting after losing the 2020 election. 

According to a study by the Center for Election Innovation and Research, the state had implemented an efficient automatic voter registration process. Citizens are registered through the transfer of information like a driver’s license and social security number from government agencies to state election officials.

Since implementation in 2016, voter registration increased from 78 percent of eligible voters that year to 98 percent in 2020, enabling Democrats to narrowly win the Senate and presidential elections: “as the registration rate increased, the registered population became more representative of the state’s population in terms of age and gender.” 

After Democratic victories, however, voter registration rates dropped to 92 percent of eligible voters for the 2022 gubernatorial election. The reason was unclear, but believed related to the pandemic, problems with the registration software and conservative efforts to purge voters from the rolls. 

Nevertheless, voters worked mightily to compensate for the shortfall with a record early voter turnout. Since 2022, the Georgia automatic registration process has returned to normal levels. Still, the current efforts to challenge Democratic voting rolls will introduce an element of uncertainty. In 2023, an off-year, about 8,600 voters had their registrations challenged. 

Now conservative groups are ramping up for the presidential election with software designed to help citizens file challenges. Apparently, one person has the right to file complaints against hundreds of voter registrations. Moreover, the Georgia legislature is considering a bill to make it easier to challenge a voter’s standing in the name of integrity. 

Democrats could have an advantage in raising questions about the integrity of voter rolls in conservative districts. That’s because a fair number of the Republican electorate is older, less educated, more likely to vote on Election Day and unused to being questioned that way.

Turning the tables on conservative districts will no doubt cause their voters to spit blood. But there is potential for Democratic gains in counties where either Biden or Trump squeaked by in 2020. Out of the total Georgia vote that year, Biden garnered 2,472,000 (49.5 percent) to Trump’s 2,457,000 (49.2 percent). A cursory survey of the 2020 Georgia election map reveals 10 or more swing counties where the integrity of Republican voting rolls could be subject to question. 

The largest such counties are Fayette, where Trump received 36,375 voters to Biden’s 31,937; and Newton, which Biden won by 29,794 to Trump’s 23,869. There are small counties with close results as well, like Peach, where Trump garnered 6,500 votes to Biden’s 5,920; and Baldwin, where Biden won 9,140 votes to Trump’s 8,903 votes.

If Democrats engage in a counter-campaign to question Republican voting rolls, they could detect enough problematic registrations to offset the conservative effort to take Democrats off the field. Even more, by forcing Republicans to play defense, Democrats may also force the state to reexamine the consequences of such petty practices.

Democrats should consider the merits of tit-for-tat voter roll challenges until conservative groups stop playing games with Black voters.

Roger House is professor emeritus of American Studies at Emerson College and the author of “Blue Smoke: The Recorded Journey of Big Bill Broonzy” and “South End Shout: Boston’s Forgotten Music Scene in the Jazz Age.” His forthcoming book is “Five Hundred Years of Black Self Governance” (Louisiana State University Press.)