Georgia removes 20 non-citizens from state voter rolls

Georgia elections officials found 20 non-citizens registered to vote in the state and have removed them from the state’s voter rolls.

During a Wednesday news briefing, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said his office had referred the 20 voters to prosecutors in Bibb, Clayton, Cobb, DeKalb, Fulton, Gwinnett and Henry counties. However, it is up to prosecutors to decide whether to bring charges.

Raffensperger said an additional 156 people require additional human investigation and that his office had opened a case file into these people.

“Georgia is a model when it comes to preventing non-citizen voting,” Raffensperger said. The secretary of state said he would conduct a “comprehensive citizenship audit” annually.

“List maintenance is not a one-time thing,” Raffensperger added. “It is an ongoing process with incremental improvement. We need to remain constantly vigil.”

While the revelation of non-citizen voters on the state’s rolls will spark concerns from critics, state officials said the number would not change the outcome of this year’s presidential election, which has seen more than two million Georgians already cast ballots.

“I do not see that changing the outcome of the election in Georgia, especially since we only identified 20, and they’ve all been canceled,” Gabriel Sterling, the Georgia Secretary of State’s chief operating officer, said during the briefing.

Georgia officials have routinely lauded the state’s election security and voter list maintenance. However, the Peach State’s elections have been in focus since the 2020 election, with critics on both sides of the aisle lobbing attacks.

Some Republicans have questioned the outcome of the 2020 election, while Democrats have criticized measures lawmakers have passed, namely Senate Bill 202, the Election Integrity Act of 2021.

Following the announcement, Greater Georgia Chairwoman Kelly Loeffler called for increased transparency and said Raffensperger must answer questions about the audit’s findings.

“The revelation that 20 non-citizens – and potentially 156 more – have registered to vote in Georgia is long-awaited information that Georgians deserve to know,” Greater Georgia Chairwoman Kelly Loeffler said in a statement.

“But it is deeply concerning that our Secretary of State refused to share his findings for months – and during that time, repeatedly and falsely assured voters that ‘zero’ non-citizens were registered to vote,” Loeffler, a former Republican U.S. senator from Georgia, added. “Voters just want the truth – and if state officials continue to withhold or misrepresent it, they will soon erode the trust that has been rebuilt in our system thanks to strong laws and advocacy.”