The Republican National Committee has moved to intervene in a new federal lawsuit that alleges county election boards throughout Georgia have illegally removed roughly 1,000 voters from voter registration rolls at the behest of election denial activists, Rolling Stone and American Doom have learned. Many of the voters removed from the rolls are homeless, the lawsuit alleges. The involvement of the RNC — where the former president installed his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, as co-chair — is another concerning sign that the Republican Party and the Trump campaign are interfering in Georgia elections less than 90 days from the presidential election, according to voting rights advocates and Democrats.
The RNC’s motion to intervene in the lawsuit comes after the new MAGA majority on the Georgia State Election Board passed a rule allowing county election officials to arbitrarily deny certification of results . On Monday, the State Election Board passed another rule giving even more power to local election officials to refuse to certify results. At least 19 election deniers sit on county election boards throughout Georgia, Rolling Stone and American Doom have previously found .
In some of those counties, election denial activists have filed mass challenges to voters they say should be removed from voter rules. Those challenges alleged that voters had changed addresses but illegally remained on voter rolls. Many of those challenges were “based on unvetted documentation and unreliable information provided by private citizens, such as screenshots of purported property records or social media posts,” says the New Georgia Project and the A.
Phillip Randolph Institute, which filed the lawsuit on July 31. “The New Georgia Project was built for these fights, and we understand our assignment,” the organization says in a statement. “The vote is sacred in a representative democracy, and we will mortgage every asset we have to defend it.
” The group is suing the State Election Board, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R), and six counties for “repeated, unlawful removal of eligible voters.” The suit also targets a state law, SB 189, which allows for mass voter challenges and “further enables these types of unlawful voter removals,” according to the group. Editor’s picks Every Awful Thing Trump Has Promised to Do in a Second Term The 250 Greatest Guitarists of All Time The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time The 50 Worst Decisions in Movie History In its lawsuit, the New Georgia Project asks a federal judge to declare that the State Election Board, Raffensperger, and the counties violated the National Voting Rights Act (NVRA) in removing roughly 1,000 voters since 2022 from Georgia voter rolls.
The RNC filed its motion to intervene in the lawsuit on Friday, noting that it successfully intervened in a previous New Georgia Project lawsuit against Raffensperger, and that the Republican Party has a clear interest “in protecting their candidates, voters, and resources from plaintiffs’ attempt to invalidate Georgia’s duly 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 could be irreparably harmed by an order overriding Georgia’s election rules and undermining the integrity of Georgia’s elections.” Throwing out the challenges would “divert resources from other mission-critical activities, such as voter-turnout and voter-registration efforts, to counteract the injunction against list-maintenance procedures,” the RNC and Georgia GOP said in their filing.
This isn’t the first time that the RNC and the state party have been intimately involved with Georgia election matters. In July, the parties provided talking points to a pro-Trump member of the State Election Board on a rule that allows for more poll watchers to oversee elections, American Doom found . In emails obtained following a last-minute meeting that the State Election Board is being sued over, Georgia Republican Party Chairman Josh McKoon provided the talking points to Rick Jeffares, a pro-Trump member of the board and one of three Republican board members praised by name by Donald Trump at his Aug.
3 Atlanta rally. Included in those emails was Josh Helton, chief of “election integrity” operations for the RNC. Related Trump Doubles Down on Medal of Honor Dig Despite Backlash From Vets Trump Shares Bogus 'Swifties for Trump' Images Trump Is Worried About the TV Ratings for Harris’ DNC Speech “New Georgia Project should be applauded for stepping up to fight back against Senate Bill 189, which is a disastrous piece of legislation that targets unhoused voters and makes it easier for private citizens to challenge the eligibility of their fellow Georgians,” said Aria Branch of the Elias Law Group.
Branch has represented the New Georgia Project in past litigation. “As we have seen in other states, the RNC’s motion to intervene in this case exposes their 2024 strategy: They want right-wing activists to be able to create chaos and disenfranchise lawful voters by overwhelming election officials with last-minute mass challenges in multiple battleground states,” she said. Now, the RNC argues that throwing out the mass voter challenges that have been brought by election denial activists across the state would “result in more ineligible voters remaining on the rolls.
” The New Georgia Project says those challenges violated the NVRA in a variety of ways, including that some of the challenges occurred within 90 days of the March presidential preference primary. The NVRA prohibits voters from being removed from lists of eligible voters within 90 days of an election . The Chatham County board of elections removed “numerous” voters at its January 24, 2024 meeting — ahead of the presidential primary on March 12 and within the 90-day window of the NVRA.
Similarly, Forsyth County removed 900 voters from rolls at a series of election board meetings, one of which occurred just seven days before the March 12 presidential primary, the lawsuit contends. Gwinnett County, where the election deniers David Hancock and Alice O’Lenick serve on the county election board , is accused in the lawsuit of “immediately removing” 50 voters without giving the voters an opportunity to prove their eligibility. Macon-Bibb County removed 45 voters who the New Georgia Project says may have been unhoused because they listed a post office or UPS store as their home address, according to the lawsuit.
There, the chair of the Macon-Bibb County GOP used software created by an election denier backed by Cleta Mitchell’s Election Integrity Network to challenge voters’ eligibility. According to ProPublica , the Election Integrity Network was also behind the rule passed Monday by the State Election Board that gives local election officials more power to refuse to certify results. Spalding County, where an election denier serves as election supervisor and two deniers serve on the board, is accused of immediately removing 94 voters from rolls without giving those voters the opportunity to respond to the eligibility challenges.
Since 2020, the county has been a hotbed of election denier activity, as Rolling Stone previously reported . Now, Rolling Stone and American Doom have learned from a source in Spalding County that some voter challenges in the county have come “off-the-books” in private conversations between election denial activists and board members. The county supervisor, Kim Slaughter, is a Trump supporter who has expressed doubt in the results of the 2020 election.
The board’s chair, Ben Johnson, is a QAnon adherent who believes in election lies, primarily unfounded conspiracies about voting machines. (Johnson’s company also contracts with the county on IT work, giving him an unknown level of access to voting machines and other election equipment.) Another board member, Roy McClain, is a full-throated election denier who refused to certify results in 2023 .
While Fulton County has not recently kicked voters off the rolls, the county is included in the lawsuit because of its large homeless population and concerns that challenges could be made there, counteracting voter registration programs for the unhoused that are carried out by the New Georgia Project and the A. Phillip Randolph Institute. The groups say in their lawsuit that SB 189, a voter suppression law passed earlier this year, wrongfully “forces unhoused voters without a permanent address to use their county registrar’s office as their mailing address for election purposes.
” The lawsuit notes that homeless voters “will be unable to obtain their election mail due to the unlawful mailing address restriction” required by SB 189. Trending Trump Is Worried About the TV Ratings for Harris’ DNC Speech Democrats Taunt Trump At Trump Tower Chicago Ahead of Convention People Are Trying Magic Mushrooms for Depression — and Accidentally Meeting God Alain Delon Was More Than Just the Single Most Beautiful Movie Star Ever “It’s not surprising that the GOP is defending the use of mass voter purges by far-right election denier activists,” said Lauren Groh-Wargo, CEO of the left-leaning voting rights group, Fair Fight. “Even though mass voter purges date back to Jim Crow, the modern day GOP’s focus is still voter suppression at all costs.
From advancing a record number of voter suppression laws since 2020 to attempts here in Georgia, and elsewhere, to interfere in election certification — it seems MAGA is going all out to help Trump win, even if he can’t earn a majority of Americans’ votes.” This story is being published in partnership with American Doom , a newsletter that focuses on right-wing extremism and other threats to democracy ..
