Georgia election officials plan to cancel about 455,000 inactive voter registrations this summer, one of the largest registration removals in U.S. history.
More than half the registrations scheduled for cancellation were identified by a 24-state organization called ERIC, which reports when a voter has moved and is no longer eligible to vote in Georgia.
The mass cancellation by the Georgia secretary of state’s office arrives as conservative critics of the state’s voter registration list allege it’s inaccurate and vulnerable to voter fraud. They say ERIC hasn’t been effective in finding outdated registrations among the state’s 8.3 million registered voters.
State Elections Director Blake Evans said the size of this year’s registration removal process shows that ERIC — the Electronic Registration Information Center — works.
“We want to do everything we can within the law to have the cleanest voter list possible,” Evans said. “ERIC is the best tool out there right now that gives us valuable information you can’t get anywhere else.”