Last Updated on December 21, 2020
Election officials in Cobb County, Georgia, the states third most populated county, have dismissed – without investigation – claims that over 16,000 people who have moved from the State of Georgia cast ballots in the November 3, 2020, General Election and are still eligible to vote in the January 5, 2021 run-off elections.
The Cobb Board of Elections & Registration voted Friday to outright dismiss three complaints that sought to remove ineligible voters from the county’s roll. By law, every county in the United States is commanded to keep up-to-date and clean voter rolls.
The challenges that were filed – three in all –called into question approximately 16,024 people who are on record as having moved out of the State of Georgia.
#BREAKING: DENIED. All three challenges to tens of thousands of voters in Cobb County before the US Senate runoffs have been denied on a 4-0 vote of the Board of Elections. They denied the challenges saying there is no probable cause. Pre or post-election litigation expected. https://t.co/N7UOCuTYLq pic.twitter.com/SE4OkG2zOW
— Brendan Keefe – Atlanta News First (@BrendanKeefe) December 18, 2020
The chairman of the Republican Party in Cobb County, Jason Shepherd, notified the election board that he unearthed evidence of approximately 16,024 people registered to vote in the county who are, by law, ineligible to vote in any Georgia election because of their non-residency.
Shepherd said the information was available in an open-source format, for anyone to find, by comparing the county’s voter registration database against the National Change of Address Registry. He said that he had explained this in a letter to the election board earlier this month.
Marietta attorney Pamela Reardon brought two similar challenges before the election board. One of the submissions was filed in the name of the True the Vote organization. True the Vote is a Texas-based election integrity group.
On Friday, True the Vote announced it is partnering with Georgians in every county across the state to challenge 364,541 potentially ineligible voters.
In dismissing the challenges without investigating the claims, the Cobb County Board of Elections & Registration said it denied all three challenges because there was no “probable cause” to pursue the claims.
“I don’t believe this is probable cause to challenge these voters,” Gregg Litchfield, one of the county’s attorneys, said during the meeting. “The mere production of a voter registration database, compared with a national change of address registry, is not sufficient.”
As was to be expected, Shepherd, in his official capacity as County GOP chair, was pointed in his response.
“[The county board] utterly failed in its duty to keep elections in Cobb secure by refusing to investigate whether any of the over 16,000 voters who have filled out and submitted a change of address form with the US Postal Service showing they have changed their residence to a new one outside the State of Georgia have, in fact, moved outside the state and are ineligible to vote in Georgia under Georgia law,” Shepherd said.
“For some reason, either laziness, incompetence, or outright corruption,” Shepherd added, “the Cobb Board of Elections doesn’t think that by someone changing address to a new one out of state means that person moved out of state. I find that simply unbelievable.”
Georgians go to the polls on January 5, 2021, using the same voter rolls and the same Dominion Voting Systems machines and software – and using the same tabulation procedures – that delivered the questionable results of November 3, 2020, General Election.
