by Doug Bock Clark
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The Secretary of State’s Office acknowledged on Friday that it had identified several such attempts, including fruitless attempts to withdraw the registrations of two well-known Republicans, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, four days after Georgia Democrats began issuing warnings that bad actors could use the state’s new online website for voter registrations.
The Associated Press and The Current‘s independent investigations revealed that the website had at least two security flaws that briefly exposed voters ‘ birthdates, their final four Social Security numbers, and their whole driver’s license numbers, which were precisely the information required to withdraw other people’s voter registrations.
Mike Hassinger, a spokeswoman for Georgia’s Secretary of State’s Office, said the state had been monitoring withdrawal requests for abuse and that’s how it spotted the versions targeting Greene’s and Raffensperger’s licenses.
He added that less well-known voters may benefit from additional protections, such as warnings on the website that a single user could not submit many cancellation requests, reviews of county election staff requests, and a postcard that alerts voters whose registration has been canceled. He claimed that those protections make it extremely challenging to revoke a voter’s membership. ” Does this site be used to withdraw a legitimate politician’s enrollment”? Hassinger said. ” Yes, in the same way that winning the lottery without purchasing a ticket is possible. Your winning ticket might be blown into your bag by the weather. Not good, but potentially possible”.
Raffensperger was unable to post, according to Hassinger. Greene’s legislative office did not respond to e-mail requests for comment right away.
” Instead of apologizing and working to fix the issue, Brad Raffensperger is denying it exists”, said Max Flugrath, director of communications for Fair Fight Action, a voting rights advocacy organization. ” Assistants will make every effort possible to assure voters have the knowledge needed to record, cast a ballot, and have their voting count,” said the secretary of state.
The voter registration withdrawal site “empowers conspiracy theorists and other bad actors to refuse Georgians the right to vote,” according to the standard X accounts for the Georgia Senate Democrats. In response, one commenter replied with the birthdays of Republican officials, including Greene and Raffensperger, noting:” Lots of people have their birthday in the public domain”. One user posted,” Overwhelm them with cancelled well-known Republican’s registrations”!
To start the cancellation process on the portal, all users need is a voter’s name, date of birth and county of residence. The voter’s last four digits of their Social Security number or their full driver’s license number are also required to provide the cancellation request in writing. Additionally, you can print and mail a form to the voter’s county election office or the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office along with that information. According to Hassner, election officials would not accept paper requests without a Social Security or driver’s license number.
The portal cautions users that it is illegal to fess out someone and void a voter registration by pretending to be a voter. Hassinger said the Secretary of State’s Office was consulting with in-house legal experts about whether to seek charges for the individuals who had attempted to cancel Raffensperger’s and Greene’s registrations.
Hassinger claims that the county election office where the voter is registered receives the request for cancellation after receiving the information that was submitted through the portal. If they do, a postcard is sent to the voter’s address announcing that they will be removed unless the voter responds. A voter who attempted to vote but failed the postcard still had the option to cast a provisional ballot, he claimed, which would still be counted once the voter attested that they had not intended to have their registration revoked.
The portal’s launch on July 29 coincided with legislation that made it easier for Georgians to challenge voter registration in 2021 and 2024. Right-wing activists have challenged tens of thousands of voters in the state, though that process is different.
According to Hassinger, the cancellation website has built-in features that should stop one user from submitting numerous cancellation requests. He added that the Secretary of State’s Office launched the website on the advice of its IT department to make it simpler and safer for voters to revoke their registration if they leave the state. He claimed that the campaign was unaffected by any recent legislation or the pressure from right-wing candidate candidates for voter registration.
Election officials are required to contact voters to verify that inactive registrations have been removed from their records under the federal mandated process, which requires years.
Hassinger claimed that the site’s security measures have been successful, and that there have n’t been any changes due to this. He noted that there have been discussions about enhancing software rollouts in the future, including adding potential testing, hiring more coding staff, and increasing the budget for this work.
Hassinger added that the portal is safer than the older procedures for canceling a voter’s registration, which required sending sensitive personal information via email or mail, making them attractive targets for identity thieves.
” We want to protect voters ‘ personally identifiable information”, Hassinger said. ” That’s part of running secure elections, and that’s the job that we take very seriously”.
