Judicial Watch threatens suit over voter rolls in 10 Georgia counties
Lee County election officials say voter registration maintenance is being performed properly
By Jim Hendricks
ALBANY — Judicial Watch is threatening to sue Georgia’s elections office over what the conservative organization contends is over-registration of voters in 10 counties, including Lee County.
Lee County Elections Supervisor Veronica Johnson, however, says her office is properly maintaining the integrity of the county’s voter rolls and that the county’s list of eligible registered voters is accurate. She also said that the 2010 census, which local officials have contended undercounted Lee County’s population, may be part of the issue.
“I can promise you that every voter in Lee County strictly followed the guidelines of the Georgia law and all the directives given to us by the Secretary of State’s Elections Division,” Johnson said. “We take protecting the voter registration laws very seriously.
“We do the maintenance we’re supposed to do. We require everything we’re supposed to require for voter registration, and certainly on election day we follow all the state laws. We do take our job very seriously here.”
In a letter dated April 11, Judicial Watch told Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp that 10 counties in the state had more registered voters than citizens who were voting age as estimated by the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2011-15 American Community Survey. That, the organization charged in its letter, indicated that Georgia municipalities were not conducting “reasonable voter registration record maintenance” as required by the National Voter Registration Act.
The counties the organization has targeted in Georgia are Lee, Bryan, Columbia, DeKalb, Fayette, Forsyth, Fulton, Marion, McIntosh and Oconee. On its website, Judicial Watch also cited 10 counties in Alabama, six in Florida, 24 in Illinois, two in Iowa, 30 in Kentucky, one in Maryland, two in New Jersey, one in New York, 15 in North Carolina and one in Tennessee.
Regarding its Georgia accusations, the organization threatened to file a lawsuit against the Georgia Secretary of State’s office if the office does not make available records required under the cited federal act and does not take specific actions to correct the violations Judicial Watch is alleging within 90 days.
Candice Broce, press secretary for the Secretary of State’s Office, said Monday that Kemp’s office is working on a response to the organization.
“We’re in the process of responding to it,” Broce said. “We do conduct list maintenance that keeps our rolls up to date. There have been challenges to the processes in the past by other groups. There are those that say we do too much, those that say we do too little.”
With challenges to the processes, the Secretary of State’s office will have to hold up on its standard procedures until it gets some direction from the courts or reaches an agreement, she said. Broce said the office will stay in communication with the named counties regarding the action.
Johnson said that while she doesn’t know what numbers Judicial Watch is basing its accusations on, Lee County officials have believed the county was undercounted in the 2010 census. Before the 2010 census was released, projections had Lee County’s population estimated at 32,000-34,000. The census, however, said it was 28,000.
“Lee County always felt like we were greatly undercounted in that census,” Johnson said, noting she didn’t receive a census form at her home and had to take the initiative to get one to be counted. “… I think it (Lee County’s inclusion on the Judicial Watch list) has a lot to do with census numbers in 2010 being underreported. I do think our county was undercounted.”
While Lee County did have an increase in registration for the 2008 election, it’s not seen sharp growth since then.
“Our registration numbers have not fluctuated greatly from 2010,” Johnson said. “We’re pretty much where we were in 2008. We’ve had slow/moderate growth, but not anything that should be alarming. … We’ve had growth, but we haven’t had substantial growth like we did 20 years ago.”
She said she has sent Kemp’s office a letter asking to be kept informed in regard to his office’s response to Judicial Watch. In the meantime, she said, she wants to assure Lee County residents that her office is doing its job properly.
“Anybody can say anything they want to,” she noted. “It doesn’t necessarily mean it’s true.”
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