Bloomberg: Voter Purges May Be Illegal 90 Days Before an Election — Republicans Are Trying Anyway

Bloomberg: Voter Purges May Be Illegal 90 Days Before an Election — Republicans Are Trying Anyway

Aunna Dennis, executive director of Common Cause Georgia, said that voters whose registration has been challenged will face different outcomes depending on their county.  “Counties are not getting proper guidance from the state on how to handle these mass challenges,” she said. 

(Bloomberg) — A series of last-minute challenges to the eligibility of tens of thousands of mostly Democratic voters by acolytes of Donald Trump risk violating federal law and threaten to complicate vote counting in US midterm elections in key states like Georgia.

Many of those efforts — including one backed by former Trump National Security Adviser Mike Flynn and Overstock.com Chief Executive Officer Patrick Byrne to toss 37,500 voters from the rolls in a Democratic Atlanta suburb — have sprung up within the 90-day freeze on voter purges under the 1993 National Voter Registration Act.

As of late August, more than 65,000 voter registrations have been challenged in several Georgia counties, including its most Democratic ones — far more than the 11,000-vote margin President Joe Biden won there in 2020.

That, as well as challenges in Iowa, Michigan, Florida and Texas, has prompted the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University and the Campaign Legal Center to warn Georgia officials that canceling any voter registrations this close to the November midterms would be illegal. Voting rights groups are considering a legal challenge. …

Georgia was the epicenter of Trump’s efforts to undermine elections since he lost the state in 2020. Governor Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, both Republicans, opposed Trump’s efforts to overturn his loss, but they supported the 2021 law.

Mike Hassinger, a spokesman for Raffensperger, acknowledged that federal law bars systematic purges of voter registrations within 90 days of an election but said that people who are no longer eligible to vote can still be removed on a case-by-case basis.

“The challenge review and hearing process can put a burden on county election officials, especially if there are a large number of challenges,” he said. “However, county election officials need to continue to follow both Georgia and federal law.”

Aunna Dennis, executive director of Common Cause Georgia, said that voters whose registration has been challenged will face different outcomes depending on their county.

“Counties are not getting proper guidance from the state on how to handle these mass challenges,” she said.