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The Georgia State Electoral Council on Wednesday referred two cases to prosecutors related to organizations that helped mobilize a record number of voters in the state during the 2020 election, which critics say is an intimidation attempt.
One case has to do with the New Georgia Project (NGP), the group founded in 2014 by Stacey Abrams, which helps mobilize colored voters. In 2019, investigators allege that the group violated state law by failing to submit 1,268 voter registration applications within the ten days required by state rules. The respondent mentioned in the matter is Senator Raphael Warnock, who according to the group served as chairman of his board at the time, but according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution was incorrectly listed on documents as the group’s CEO.
“The February 10 State Electoral Council meeting was the first time that NGP has heard from 2019 about the allegations regarding NGP’s important voter registration work,” Nse Ufot, who has served as the group’s chief executive since 2014, said in a statement. . “We have not received any information about this from the secretary or any other official in Georgia, therefore we will not have any further comment on the investigation.”
The episode is the latest example of Republicans targeting the group. In 2014, Brian Kemp, the then top electoral officer of the state, announced an investigation into allegations of forged registration materials, but found no widespread violation. Late last year, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, accused the group of asking people from outside Georgia to register in the state – which the group denied.
These investigations force the organization to allocate resources to advocates who they believe could otherwise be invested in voter registration.
‘Every dollar we have to spend to defend ourselves against the nuisance and biased investigations is a dollar that we cannot put in the field to register new voters and to have a high quality conversation about the power of their voice and the importance of this moment, ”Ufot told the Guardian last year.
The second case to which the State Council referred concerned a recruiter for the Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda, another group that played an important role in registering new voters. The recruiter allegedly submitted 70 false registrations while working on behalf of the group.
Helen Butler, the group’s executive director, said the group had caught the falsified applications for voter registration in 2019 and that she was the person who reported the recruiter to the foreign minister for investigation. The fact was not mentioned in a press release Thursday from the Raffensperger office that disclosed the references.
“We have a whole process to make sure we have legal forms,” Butler said in an interview. “We want people to vote. We do not spend our time getting deceptive forms. ”
Cliff Albright, co-founder of the Black Voters Matter organization, said it is not uncommon to submit isolated cases of errors or forms late during campaigns. But the attempt to prosecute voter registration groups was, according to him, an “intimidation tactic”.
“The state of Georgia is just trying to reaffirm that even though they did not go along with Trump’s coup attempt, they still want to make it clear that they are still the main oppressors,” he said.
Georgia quickly emerged as the center of the struggle for suffrage in America. Joe Biden won the presidential race there, the first Democrat to do so in nearly 30 years, with just 12,670 votes. Warnock and Jon Ossoff, both Democrats, also caused incredible uproar in two Senate run-offs in January. Georgia Republicans are already considering a series of measures that will make it harder to vote, including requiring people to show their ID twice during the vote-by-mail process and getting rid of absent votes.
The cases were among 35 election offenses that the council referred for prosecution, Raffensperger’s office said in a statement. The cases have been referred to the Attorney General as well as local prosecutors, who can decide whether the cases will be pursued further.
“Election fraud is not tolerated in Georgia. “If there is evidence of that, the people responsible will be prosecuted,” he said. Georgia has several safeguards that enable our team of investigators to detect fraudulent sentiment. They have worked to catch the wrongdoing in these cases, and they maintain the security of Georgia elections.