More than 1,600 noncitizens attempted to register to vote in Georgia in the state’s first-ever citizenship review of its voter rolls, the Georgia secretary of state announced Monday.
The audit found that 1,634 noncitizens were caught trying to register and have since been placed in “pending citizenship” status, removing them from consideration to be added to the state’s voter rolls. None of the flagged individuals had cast a ballot in recent elections.
“Ensuring that only citizens are voting in Georgia’s elections is key to upholding the integrity of the vote in Georgia,” Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said in a statement. “As liberal states and cities around the country are changing their laws to allow noncitizen voting, I will continue to take steps to ensure Georgia’s elections are executed with integrity.”
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The review was conducted through the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ System Alien Verification for Entitlements program, which provides immigration status information to government entities. Some states, such as Colorado and Arizona, reportedly use the system as an extra method to check their voter rolls.
Georgia officials partnered with the Department of Driver Services to identify potential ineligible voters before sending an initial list through the SAVE process. The audit found a total of 2,258 applicants with a “pending citizenship” status, with 624 lacking the necessary information to be verified through the USCIS system.
“As soon as you see that they were born in a foreign country, then the next question logically was going to be the proof of your citizenship,” Raffensperger told the Washington Examiner. “If they don’t present that, then they are not registered to vote.”
However, some states have run into snags with using the program. One such incident happened in 2012 in Florida, when a botched audit flagged 2,625 eligible voters as noncitizens. State officials later nixed the process, making it unclear how many noncitizens were actually on the voter rolls at the time.
Other states have had issues with independent citizenship audits, including an effort by Texas in 2019 to purge its voter rolls of noncitizens that led to three federal investigations into the process. The review flagged nearly 100,000 registered voters because the data did not take into account immigrants who gained citizenship, falsely labeling them as illegitimate.
However, Raffensperger said he believes their audit is accurate.
“I think Georgia, we did it right,” he said. “The proof is, we did have that many noncitizens who attempted to register.”
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If voters are incorrectly taken off the list, Raffensperger’s office said it’s “very simple to correct that kind of mistake” by showing proof of citizenship when going to the polls.
The secretary of state said his office would reach out to the individuals listed as ineligible to verify whether they were accurately flagged as noncitizens. The office will then prosecute those who registered illegally.
“We will do our due diligence, ask them individually, and then we will prosecute,” Raffensperger said. “I just want everyone to be clear: In Georgia, you have got to be an American citizen to vote. And if you aren’t and you’re trying to vote, we will prosecute you.”
