Florida Republican Attorney Bill Price is the subject of an investigation after saying he intended to vote illegally in the Georgia Senate runoff elections in January.
Georgia authorities told Fox News they are looking into Price after announcing at the Bay County Republican Party of Florida headquarters that he plans to move in with his brother, who lives in Hiram, Georgia, change his voter registration, and vote in the two runoff contests that will determine which party controls the Senate.
“Registering without the intention of permanent residency is a felony. Only permanent residents are eligible to vote in Georgia,” Georgia’s office of secretary of state spokesman Walter Jones said in a statement. “Secretary Raffensperger has made it clear he has no tolerance for election wrongdoing and will investigate any credible evidence of it.”
In a press release last month, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger warned activist groups who encouraged others to move to Georgia with the expressed purpose of voting that they would be prosecuted under state law.
Georgia law requires that registrants be “a resident of this state and of the county or municipality in which he or she seeks to vote” and “the residence of any person shall be held to be in that place in which such person’s habitation is fixed, without any present intention of removing therefrom.”
“This would include individuals who move to Georgia solely for the sake of casting a ballot in an election with no intention of remaining in the state,” Raffensperger’s press release said.
Price made the comments days after the general election and encouraged others to be his “roommate” and vote.
“We have to win on Jan. 5, and I will invite each and every one of you to be my roommate in Georgia. I’m moving to Georgia. I’m changing my voter registration right now. And I’m inviting two million people to be my roommate if they want. We’ll make room for you at the dinner table,” Price said. “We are going to win that election in January. And that’s what needs to be done.”
Price said that if his fellow Florida Republicans were unwilling to change their address to Georgia for “two months,” they “might as well move to Venezuela now.”
