Georgia Secretary of State Announces Audit of ‘Potential’ Noncitizen Voters
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) announced Thursday that he is conducting an audit of “potential” noncitizens who are registered to vote.
In a statement, Raffensperger explained how the citizenship verification process works. Using information from the Georgia Department of Driver Services, the state identifies people who may be noncitizens.
Then, he said that Georgia utilizes the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE), an online service administered by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, to verify the citizenship status of people who have been flagged as potential noncitizens.
“This is a vital step in maintaining election security and integrity in Georgia,” Raffensperger said in the statement. “We are double-checking to make sure that if any non-citizens attempt to register to vote, they will not be able to vote unless they prove that they are U.S. citizens.”
He also noted that a noncitizen attempting to register to vote is a felony with a sentence of up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $100,000.
Raffensperger said that the results of the audit “should be announced in the coming days.”
In his Thursday statement, he also criticized President Joe Biden for saying he would veto the nationwide proof of citizenship bill that the U.S. House passed this week.
“By saying he would veto the SAVE (Safeguard American Voter Eligibility) Act, President Biden is saying that he doesn’t want to verify the citizenship status of people attempting to vote,” he said. “I could not disagree more with that position. In Georgia, we have robust verification procedures in place to make sure the votes of citizens are not diluted by non-citizens. ‘Trust but verify’ is just common sense.”
However, this is not at all what the Biden administration said in a statement on the bill. They said the bill is unnecessary because “the current laws to prevent noncitizen voting are working as intended—it is extraordinarily rare for noncitizens to break the law by voting in Federal elections.”
In fact, Raffensperger conducted an audit of Georgia’s voter rolls in 2022 and found that over 1,000 noncitizens attempted to register to vote, but they were unable to due to safeguards in place. None of them cast a ballot.
Additionally, the Biden administration explained that the SAVE Act would actually harm eligible voters.
“The alleged justification for this bill is based on easily disproven falsehoods,” the Biden administration said. “This bill would do nothing to safeguard our elections, but it would make it much harder for all eligible Americans to register to vote and increase the risk that eligible voters are purged from voter rolls.”
Raffensperger has joined a growing list of Republican officials who are spreading a false narrative about noncitizen voting. This is part of a GOP tactic to cast doubt on the credibility of the upcoming election — which is already an issue in Georgia.
A recent Atlanta-Journal Constitution poll revealed that nearly half of Georgia voters are concerned the 2024 election will not be fair and accurate and believe that there was widespread voter fraud in 2020.
Read Raffensperger’s statement here.
Learn about Raffenperger’s history as a vote suppressor here.