Georgia Plans to Purge 300,000 Names From Its Voter Rolls. A coming purge of Georgia’s voter rolls has raised alarms among advocacy groups in the state and nationwide, many of whom see the issue of who gets to cast a ballot as reemerging, particularly in battle ground states in next year’s election. This week, Georgia state officials said they would be removing about 300,000 names from their lists of eligible voters, a number that amounts to almost 4% of those registered to vote. The state said the move is a normal part of updating records after voters have moved away or stopped casting ballots. Walter Jones, the spokesman for the Georgia secretary of state’s voter education program, called the purge “a routine process that every state does,” and one that has gone on for years in Georgia under both parties. The purges, however, have become deeply controversial in Georgia. In 2018, in one of the most competitive governor’s races in years, Brian Kemp, a Republican, declared a narrow victory against his democratic rival, Stacey Abrams. Since Kemp was then serving as Georgia secretary of state, he oversaw his own election, which critics accused him of manipulating by conducting purges in communities that were more likely to vote for Democrats. He beat Abrams by 1.4 percentage points. Voting rights advocates described the latest purge as troubling, saying it was just the beginning of efforts by some state officials across the country to suppress the vote in competitive races. They see the efforts as targeting the young and people of color since they are often disproportionately hit by the removals. “We see very similar problems reflected in states all around the country now; there have been an uptick in purges,” said Hannah Fried, the executive director of All Voting Is Local, a group that fights wrongful removals. It is monitoring two other likely battleground states, Florida and Ohio. The stakes in Georgia are especially high next year because in addition to voting for president, Georgians will be picking two new senators: Johnny Isakson, a Republican, announced in August that he was retiring for health reasons, and David Perdue, also a Republican, is up for reelection. Traditionally, when two Senate seats are simultaneously up for grabs, they often go the same way, which is critical when the Republicans command only a 53-47 majority in the upper chamber. Jones said Georgia had limited its purge to voters who had registered a change of address, had official mail returned undelivered and had not been active in the last two election cycles. Those voters had received a notice asking them to confirm that they still lived at their addresses, and they were given two additional election cycles to respond. Next week, those who have failed to do so will receive a final notice along with a card they must return to avoid being purged. If they do not respond, their names will be removed. Last year, in a case where Ohio similarly removed voters who had sat out previous elections, the Supreme Court found that the state had not violated federal law. Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the 5-4 majority, said it was not up to the court to determine “the ideal method” for a state “to keep its voting rolls up-to-date.” Ohio has since struggled to keep its rolls accurate. This year, Ohio’s secretary of state released the names of 235,000 voters it had planned to purge from the rolls in September, but a review of the names by the government and nongovernmental groups revealed that up to 20% of the names were there in error. https://news.yahoo.com/georgia-plans-purge-300-000-121914986.html