National Republican Party The committee has moved to intervene in a new federal lawsuit alleging that local election boards across Georgia illegally removed nearly 1,000 voters from voter registration rolls at the request of election denial activists, Rolling Stone American Dome has learned that many of the voters who were purged from the rolls have become homeless, the lawsuit alleges.
The involvement of the Republican National Committee — where the former president installed his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, as co-chair — is another troubling sign that the GOP and the Trump campaign are interfering in Georgia’s elections less than 90 days before the presidential election, according to voting rights advocates and Democrats. The RNC’s move to intervene in the lawsuit comes after a new majority on the Georgia State Board of Elections passed a rule allowing county election officials to arbitrarily refuse to certify results. On Monday, the state board of elections passed another rule giving more power to local election officials to refuse to certify results.
At least 19 election deniers sit on local election boards across Georgia, Rolling Stone American Dome and American Dome have previously found that in some of these counties, election denial activists have filed mass challenges to voters they say should be removed from voter rolls. These challenges alleged that voters had changed their addresses but were illegally remaining on the voter rolls. The New Georgia Project and the A. Philip Randolph Institute, which filed the lawsuit on July 31, say many of these challenges “were based on unverified documentation and unreliable information provided by private citizens, such as screenshots of alleged property records or social media posts.”
“The New Georgia Project was created for these fights, and we understand our mission,” the organization said in a statement. “Voting is sacred in a representative democracy, and we will pledge all our assets to defend it.”
The group is suing the state Board of Elections, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R), and six counties for “repeatedly illegal removals of eligible voters.” The lawsuit also targets a state law, SB 189, that allows for mass voter challenges and “also enables these types of illegal voter removals,” according to the group.
In its lawsuit, the New Georgia Project asked a federal judge to declare that the state Board of Elections, Raffensperger, and the counties violated the National Voting Rights Act (NVRA) by removing nearly 1,000 voters since 2022 from Georgia’s voter rolls.
The Republican National Committee filed its motion to intervene in the lawsuit on Friday, noting that it had successfully intervened in a previous lawsuit brought by the New Georgia Project against Raffensperger, and that the Republican Party has a clear interest “in protecting its candidates, voters and resources from plaintiffs’ attempt to invalidate Georgia’s properly enacted election rules.” The RNC, in conjunction with the Georgia Republican Party, argues that the parties should be allowed to intervene in the case because “their interests would be irreparably harmed by an order that overrides Georgia’s election rules and undermines the integrity of Georgia’s elections.”
The Republican National Committee and the Georgia Republican Party said in their filing that canceling the challenges would “divert resources from other important activities, such as efforts to increase voter turnout and voter registration, to counter the injunction against list maintenance measures.”
This isn’t the first time the Republican National Committee and the state Republican Party have been closely involved in Georgia’s election affairs. In July, the parties provided talking points to a pro-Trump member of the state Board of Elections about a rule allowing more poll watchers to oversee elections, American Doom found. In emails obtained after a last-minute meeting that is being sued by the state Board of Elections, Georgia GOP Chairman Josh McCone provided the talking points to Rick Jeffares, a pro-Trump member of the board and one of three Republican board members Donald Trump praised by name at his rally in Atlanta on Aug. 3. Among those emails was Josh Helton, the head of “election integrity” operations for the Republican National Committee.
“The New Georgia Project should be commended for stepping up its efforts to fight Senate Bill 189, a disastrous piece of legislation that targets homeless voters and makes it easier for ordinary citizens to challenge the eligibility of their fellow Georgians,” said Aria Branch of Elias Law Group. Branch has represented the New Georgia Project in previous lawsuits.
“As we’ve seen in other states, the RNC’s proposal to intervene in this case reveals their strategy for 2024: They want right-wing activists to be able to create chaos and disenfranchise legitimate voters by overwhelming election officials with last-minute mass challenges in several swing states,” she said.
Now, the national Republican Party claims that eliminating the mass challenges brought by statewide election denial activists would “result in more ineligible voters remaining on the rolls.”
The New Georgia Project says these challenges violated the NVRA in several ways, including that some of the challenges occurred within 90 days of the March presidential primary. The NVRA prohibits voters from being removed from the rolls of eligible voters within 90 days of an election. The Chatham County Board of Elections removed “numerous” voters at its meeting on Jan. 24, 2024 — before the March 12 presidential primary and within the 90-day window of the NVRA.
Similarly, Forsyth County purged 900 voters from its voter rolls in a series of election board meetings, one of which occurred just seven days before the March 12 presidential primary, the lawsuit alleges. Gwinnett County, where election deniers David Hancock and Alice Olynyk serve on the county election board, is accused in the lawsuit of “immediately removing 50 voters” without giving voters a chance to prove their eligibility. And Macon-Bibb County purged 45 voters who the New Georgia Project says were likely homeless because they listed a post office or UPS store as their home address, according to the lawsuit.
There, the chairman of the Macon-Bibb County Republican Party used software created by an election denier with the backing of Cleta Mitchell’s Election Integrity Network to challenge voter eligibility. According to ProPublica, the Election Integrity Network was also behind a rule passed by the state Board of Elections on Monday that gives local election officials more power to refuse to certify results.
Spaulding County, where one election denier serves as supervisor of elections and two deniers serve on the board, is accused of immediately removing 94 voters from the rolls without giving those voters a chance to respond to eligibility challenges. The county has been a hotbed of election denier activity since 2020, with Rolling Stone Previously reported. Now, Rolling Stone The American Dome has learned from a Spaulding County source that some of the county's voter appeals have been “off the record” in private conversations between election denial activists and board members.
County Supervisor Kim Slaughter is a Trump supporter who has expressed skepticism about the 2020 election results. Board Chairman Ben Johnson is a conspiracy theorist who claims the election was illegitimate and believes in election hoaxes, particularly unfounded conspiracies about voting machines. (Johnson’s company also contracts with the county for information technology work, giving him an unknown level of access to voting machines and other election equipment.) Another board member, Roy MacLean, is an outspoken election denier who has refused to certify the results in 2023.
Although Fulton County has not recently removed voters from the rolls, the lawsuit includes the county because of its large homeless population and concerns that challenges could be filed there, hampering voter registration programs for the homeless implemented by the New Georgia Project and the A. Philip Randolph Institute.
The groups say in their lawsuit that Senate Bill 189, a voter suppression law passed earlier this year, “forces homeless voters who do not have a permanent address to use the county recorder’s office as a mailing address for election purposes.” The lawsuit says homeless voters “will not be able to receive election mail due to the illegal mailing address restrictions” imposed by Senate Bill 189.
“It’s no surprise that the Republican Party is advocating for the use of mass voter purges by far-right election-denying activists,” said Lauren Groh Wargo, CEO of the left-leaning voting rights group Vervet. “While mass voter purges date back to Jim Crow, the modern-day GOP’s focus remains on voter suppression at all costs. From pushing a record number of voter suppression laws since 2020 to attempts here in Georgia and elsewhere to interfere with the certification of the election — MAGA seems to be doing everything it can to help Trump win, even if he can’t win a majority of the American vote.”
This story is published in partnership with American Deatha newsletter focusing on right-wing extremism and other threats to democracy..
