Judge rules in challenge to 4,000+ Muscogee County voters with out-of-town addresses
After an hours-long hearing Wednesday in federal court in Albany, a federal judge has ruled in the dispute over a challenge to more than 4,000 Muscogee County voters who had changed their mailing addresses but remained registered to vote here.
U.S. District Court Judge Leslie Abrams Gardner ruled that Muscogee County may continue to require voters with mailing addresses outside the county to file provisional ballots in Georgia’s Jan. 5 runoffs, but it cannot disqualify those ballots based solely the voters’ names appearing on a postal service list called the “National Change of Address.”
That means to throw those ballots out, the county must have additional evidence showing those voters are not eligible to cast ballots here, such as proof that they have registered to vote in another state.
Columbus Republican Alton Russell challenged those voters’ eligibility Dec. 14, based on the NCOA, but he did not provide any additional evidence that they weren’t duly registered to vote here.
Besides people who have established residency elsewhere, the NCOA includes Columbus residents who have moved temporarily for work, college or military service, but still maintain homes in Muscogee County.
The county elections board found probable cause to sustain Russell’s challenge on Dec. 16, with the result that anyone challenged had to cast a provisional ballot to vote and would be asked to document a residence here to have that ballot counted, when the local elections board reviews the provisional ballots cast.
But the board in its review still could have counted the provisional ballot without requiring evidence of residency, if Russell couldn’t prove the voter moved away with no intention of returning.
Gardner’s latest order sets out a procedure for the board’s handling voters whose ballots may be disqualified because other evidence shows they no longer maintain homes here:
- They’re to be notified by phone and in writing by 5 p.m. EST Jan. 6.
- They’re to be advised of their right to be heard and present evidence that their ballots should be counted.
- They’re to be offered the opportunity to present their evidence in person or virtually at a hearing at 4 p.m. Jan. 8.
- They may email their information to elections director Nancy Boren at nboren@columbusga.org, fax it to 706-225-4394, mail it by 5 p.m. Jan. 8 to the Muscogee County Board of Elections and Registration at P.O. Box 1340, Columbus, Ga., 31902.
The lawsuit
Russell’s challenge prompted a lawsuit filed Dec. 23 by the group “Majority Forward” on behalf of Gamaliel Warren Turner Sr., a government contractor with the U.S. Navy temporarily living in California for work. On Dec. 27, the plaintiffs asked for an order restraining the elections board’s actions in restricting challenged voters to provisional ballots.
Gardner issued a restraining order Monday, and held a hearing on the dispute Wednesday in her Albany courtroom, where Boren testified to some of the discrepancies she had encountered, including a random search of voters on the NCOA that found nine had registered to vote in other states.
The lawsuit filed by Majority Forward cited multiple court precedents in noting that the federal government through the National Voter Registration Act has specific restrictions on removing voters with an election for federal office at hand, and Judge Gardner in her restraining order had agreed with those arguments.
“Here, the challenge to thousands of voters less than a month prior to the runoff elections — after in-person voting had begun in the state — appears to be the type of ‘systematic’ removal prohibited by the NVRA,” the judge wrote, adding Russell’s challenge “does not include the type of individualized information that the Muscogee board would have needed to undertake the individualized inquiry required by the NVRA.”
Muscogee County has argued that no voter has been removed from the registration lists as a result of Russell’s challenge. Those whose residency was questioned still were allowed to vote, with provisional ballots.
The local elections board’s attorneys, James C. Clark Jr. and Thomas F. Gristina of the Columbus firm Page, Scrantom, Sprouse, Tucker & Ford, tried to get Judge Gardner to recuse herself from the case, because she’s the sister of former Democratic candidate for governor Stacey Abrams, who lost to Republican Gov. Brian Kemp in 2018.
The recusal motion noted Abrams “has since engaged in various highly publicized efforts to increase voter registration and turnout for the 2020 general election in Georgia.”
Judge Gardner denied the motion.
This story was originally published December 31, 2020 at 12:36 PM.