WOODSTOCK, Georgia — Conservative activists in Georgia and some other states are quietly trying to find a way to remove names from the voting rolls without having to file a formal lawsuit.
They’re asking election administrators to use their data to delete voter registrations, meaning names could be removed in a less public process than a formal voter challenge. The strategy could mean that voters are not called upon in advance to defend their right to vote and that the identities of those seeking to purge voters may not be routinely public.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office insists that any living voter who is removed from the list must be notified. But because Georgia has 159 counties and no formal statewide rules governing these less formal investigations, it’s unclear how each county will respond. People who were wrongly removed could vote a provisional ballot, but local officials could only count those votes in exceptional cases.
The strategy is even expanding a new law in Georgia goes into effect Monday, which could lead to counties removing a larger share of voters using formal voter challenges.
That law has already been met with concern by Democrats and voting rights advocates. They look at the hundreds of thousands of voter challenges filed since 2020 as part of Georgia’s long election cycle history of blocking votes going back to slavery. As details of under-the-radar efforts emerge, those advocates fear a double attack on voting rights.
“There is built-in transparency in the challenge process and a certain level of voter protection in that there are notice requirements and hearings that are required,” said state Rep. Saira Draper, an Atlanta Democrat who was Joe Biden’s state director of voter protection in 2020. “You can’t get around that by just unofficially challenging people and saying it’s not a challenge because we don’t call it a challenge.”
The less formal approach has worked at least once. In Cobb County, a suburb of Atlanta, the county removed some voters after a man asked questions about 245 possibly dead people.
“Everything we do is a free service. Hey, this group of 500 people, or this group of 800 people said they moved. Maybe you should take a look at it,” Jason Fraziera Republican who has formally challenged nearly 10,000 voters in Atlanta’s predominantly Democratic Fulton County region said during a presentation Friday.
The effort is part of a large-scale national initiative coordinated by allies of Donald Trump to purge names from the electoral rolls.
An Associated Press survey of Georgia’s 40 largest counties shows that more than 18,000 voters have been challenged in 2023 and 2024, although counties have rejected most challenges. Election officials predict challenges will increase under the new law.
Most controversially, the law says officials can use the U.S. Postal Service’s National Change of Address list as evidence that people have moved, but not as the sole reason to remove voters. Opponents criticize that list as unreliable.
It is unclear how much change the law will bring, as the state has not issued guidelines for counties on how to handle challenges.
County officials routinely remove voters who are dead, convicted of crimes, mentally incompetent or no longer living in Georgia, using lists provided by the Secretary of State.
For people who have moved, federal law says Georgia can only cancel an inactive registration if a voter does not respond to a mailing and then does not vote in two subsequent federal general elections. That process takes years.
Activists seized by Trump’s lies that the 2020 election was stolen claim the state’s cleanup efforts are woefully inadequate and that inaccuracies are enabling fraud. Douglas Franka former teacher who traveled the country peddling conspiracy theories surrounding the election urged Georgians to use software called EagleAI to address challenges this spring.
“You have the constitutional right to challenge every other voter in your county,” Frank said at the Cherokee County Republican headquarters in Woodstock. “In fact, it’s not just your right. It’s your duty to clean up the voter rolls.”
True the Vote, based in Texas challenged 364,000 Georgia voters ahead of two U.S. Senate elections in 2021. Individuals and groups have mounted many more challenges since then. Election officials say many challenges are driven by EagleAI. The tool was created by Dr. John “Rick” Richards Jr., a retired physician and entrepreneur who lives in the suburbs of Augusta’s Columbia County.
Richards said in an interview Wednesday that the people who use his software are volunteers, and he compared the work of tracking down ineligible voters to picking up trash along the side of the road.
“Nobody will be denied the right to vote,” Richards said. “That’s a bunch of hooey.”
In online meetings and in-person appearances over the past year, Richards has promoted EagleAI as a sophisticated platform to purge dirty voter rolls. The Associated Press has found that the platform is funded and used by Trump supporters, some of whom worked to overturn the 2020 vote, and is entwined with the Republican’s campaign.
An EagleAI document from last year touted the system’s “use of AI” and “multi-layered algorithms” to purge dirty voter rolls, but Richards now says there is no artificial intelligence at work. Instead, the software draws in part from a database of “suspect” voters manually compiled by conservative activists, the AP found.
In recent months, an AP reporter sat in on online meetings that were publicized among activists before eventually being asked to leave. The AP has also obtained additional meeting videos to provide a behind-the-scenes look at how the software is being used in states including Arizona, Florida, Illinois, Nevada and Ohio.
“The left will hate this – hate this. But we love it,” Cleta Mitchella frequent participant, said during a presentation. Mitchell is a GOP election lawyer who joined the conversation when Trump pleaded with Raffensperger to “find” more votes in the 2020 elections. While Trump was indicted in Georgia before the call, Mitchell was not. Mitchell is now a leader in several organizations pushing for the purging of voting lists.
Richards called Mitchell’s ties “irrelevant.”
“This has absolutely nothing to do with the 2020 election — it has nothing to do with today’s politicians,” he said. “It has to do with what is right is right.”
Richards’ Columbia County elections board agreed in December to purchase EagleAI software, the only Georgia government known to have done so.
The county agreed to pay $2,000 and said EagleAI would help maintain the voter rolls but would not be “the sole means to remove a voter.” But the deal fell through because Richards failed to return a signed contract. He said election officials have been too busy to take advantage of the contract’s 90-day training period.
Eugene Williams, an active voter challenger and EagleAI user, sent Cobb County Elections Director Tate Fall three lists of a total of 245 possible deceased voters in December, January and March, citing obituaries.
“When we investigated, most of them had already been removed from the voter rolls,” Fall told the AP. “But we removed voters based on the data he sent us.”
However, she added that no voter would be removed without proof and a vote by the county election board.
Others are pushing election officials to use software other than EagleAI. True the Vote says its IV3 tool has flagged 317,886 “invalid voter records.”
Mitchell has repeatedly called on allies to befriend officials, including during an EagleAI conversation with Richards in 2023.
She suggested asking officials, “‘How can we help you? What are the things you wish you had that you don’t have?’ And they always say more money and more people. Well, you can say, ‘We have people and we’re here to help you.’”
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Amy reported from Atlanta. Associated Press writers Kate Brumback, Jeff Martin and Sudhin Thanawala in Atlanta, Russ Bynum in Savannah, Georgia, Garance Burke in San Francisco and Rhonda Shafner in New York contributed to this report.
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This story is part of an Associated Press series, “The AI Campaign,” examining the impact of artificial intelligence in the 2024 election cycle.
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Contact AP’s global investigative team at [email protected] or https://www.ap.org/tips/
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