December 18, 2020
December 18, 2020 - 12:45pm
The ACLU of Georgia sent two letters to state's election officials to demand they reject the groundless, baseless assertions in a letter that a Texas-based organization named True the Vote sent challenging the eligibility of 364,541 Georgia citizens who are registered to vote.
The ACLU of Georgia wrote that the out-of-state organization's mass voter challenge should be rejected for lack of probable cause. Probable cause requires more than a simple search from an over broad database such as the NCOA system. Probable cause must be “individualized” and“particularized with respect to that person.”
Spreadsheets that show a list of individuals who have submitted a change of mailing address form fall considerably short of this standard.
County boards across the state have already found that NCOA data cannot sustain a probable cause challenge.
Election boards in Cobb, Gwinnett, AthensClarke, Clayton, and DeKalb counties have already dismissed these mass voter challenges for lack of probable cause. At a Cobb County Board of Elections and Registration hearing held on December 18, 2020, board members unanimously voted that there was no probable cause to sustain a challenge, noting that NCOA data “is not enough proof to allow this to move forward” and “in many cases is inaccurate as a source.”
The reason for the rejections is because the NCOA information alone cannot show whether a voter may have changed their mailing address without forfeiting their eligibility to vote. For example, a voter may have moved for temporary purposes to stay with relatives during the pandemic or may be attending college in another part of the state. Even the most reliable NCOA data cannot possibly provide sufficient information to discern these circumstances.
The ACLU of Georgia also wrote that both state and federal statutes already exist which detail an elaborate, multi-year procedure for testing whether voters who register address changes with the U.S. Postal Service's National Change of Address (“NCOA”) system have actually moved.
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