American citizens fighting for election integrity achieved a significant victory after a federal district court determined that questioning the validity of numerous voters in the state of Georgia was not tantamount to “voter intimidation.”
“Back in 2020, True the Vote, Derek Somerville and I, and three other activists were all sued by Stacey Abrams’ Fair Fight organization for allegedly violating the Prohibited Acts section of the Voting Rights Act. We had independently organized two different sets of challenges to voters with residency issues ahead of Georgia’s 2021 U.S. Senate runoff. True the Vote’s challenges were broader in scope than the challenges Derek and I had coordinated, which were narrowly focused on voters who appeared to have already cast ballots with residency issues in the 2020 general election,” Mark Davis, a contributor at The Federalist, writes.
When the judge ruled in favor of all the defendants in the case and found that there had “not been any violation of Section 11(b) of the Voting Rights Act by any of the named Defendants,” we got to experience “the thrill of victory,” and Fair Fight got to experience “the agony of defeat,” which was well deserved for dragging our good names through the mud for three solid years.
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While it certainly felt great to finally be exonerated, what exactly did we “win”? We may have bloodied the noses of the schoolyard bullies, but other than walking away satisfied and knowing that they may think twice before coming after us again, what was the point of it all?
“What about all the illegal voting the challenges were meant to call attention to or possibly even prevent? What about the challenges most counties were too scared to take up once Marc Elias threatened them with an expensive lawsuit? Wasn’t that illegal voting the point of it all?” Davis asks.
Apocalyptia: Fires on the border in Lukeville, Arizona last night. Mostly men from countries in Africa. Fires have been standard the 6 weeks I’ve been here. This is part of a national park. pic.twitter.com/gEHv1XKjhb
— Just Jeff From Cali (@liberty_clarion) December 5, 2023
Previously, the aforementioned phrasing was used to condense sections of Georgia’s residence regulations on the voter registration website of the secretary of state.
If you move outside the county in which you are registered to vote in excess of 30 days prior to an election, you have lost your eligibility to vote in the county of your old residence. You must register to vote in your new county of residence. You will be assigned a new voting precinct and polling location. Remember, if you don’t register to vote by the deadline, you cannot vote in that particular election.
If you allow sufficient time for loading, you can personally observe it in “The Wayback Machine,” Davis correctly asserts.
He is curious as to why the page on the SoS’s site disappeared.
“In fact, I asked Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, as well as his chief operating officer Gabe Sterling and his general counsel Ryan Germany, about that in an email back in June 2022, but they still haven’t gotten back to me.” Davis continued before asking, “I wonder why that is?”
Well, now I know. So let me tell you the story of “Exhibit 61.”
In May 2021, I gave nearly 35,000 voter records to our secretary of state for an investigation into votes cast in the 2020 general election with residency issues, which his office had already agreed to open. The analysis of the voter data I had done on or about Nov. 25, 2020, indicated those voters had filed changes of address to an address in a different county more than 30 days before the election, but they had apparently failed to re-register there and wound up casting ballots in their previous counties.
When they did so, if they knowingly lied about where they lived, that would have arguably been a felony violation of Georgia Code § 21-2-562. Some of those voters may have filed those permanent changes of address for what was really a temporary relocation, but certainly not all of them.
According to Davis, subsequent to that election, almost one-third of those voters eventually took the necessary steps to revise their driver’s licenses and/or voter registrations to match the precise addresses they had previously informed the United States Postal Service they were relocating to, well in advance of the election. By doing so, they essentially presented supporting proof that the “change of address” details they provided to the USPS was correct.
“In July, WSB-TV Atlanta decided to do a story on all this after an article about it was published by The Federalist. WSB-TV filed an open records request with the secretary of state, got a copy of the data, and went out to interview some of those voters,” Davis added.
One voter candidly admitted he’d moved from Fulton to DeKalb but went back and voted in Fulton. Another was seemingly indignant and vehemently insisted that although he had indeed moved from Gwinnett to Fulton, he voted with a Fulton County ballot and put it in a Fulton County drop box. Yet the absentee data and the vote history trailers both indicated he voted in his old county. Part of me wished Channel 2 hadn’t put those voters on the spot like that, but the rest of me wished they had interviewed a hundred more people on the list!
You can read the full article here.