A federal judge is allowing Georgia’s plan to purge 4% of registered voters to go forward. Early Monday, U.S. District Judge Steve Jones ruled that Georgia should “maintain the status quo,” only to decide later in the day in an emergency hearing that the purge could go ahead, though he will consider it further on Thursday.
Jones was responding to an emergency request from Fair Fight Action, the voting rights group founded by Stacey Abrams. Despite allowing the purge to go forward, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that Jones said in court that registrations could conceivably be reinstated after Thursday’s hearing. But the fact that he didn’t bother to stop the purge for three days suggests that’s a slim chance.
Georgia’s Republican secretary of state is purging about 300,000 inactive voters. Fair Fight went to court to protect the registrations of 120,000 of those who are being removed for not having voted, responded to mail from elections officials, or otherwise contacted elections officials, for seven years. A new Georgia law extends the inactive period to nine years before registrations can be purged, and Fair Fight argues that should apply retroactively.
“Georgians should not lose their right to vote simply because they have not expressed that right in recent elections,” said Fair Fight Action’s Lauren Groh-Wargo.