{"id":202750,"date":"2024-08-05T16:46:15","date_gmt":"2024-08-05T20:46:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/?p=202750"},"modified":"2024-08-05T16:46:19","modified_gmt":"2024-08-05T20:46:19","slug":"marjorie-taylor-greenes-and-brad-raffenspergers-voter-registrations-targeted-in-georgias-new-online-portal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/?p=202750","title":{"rendered":"Marjorie Taylor Greene\u2019s and Brad Raffensperger\u2019s Voter Registrations Targeted in Georgia\u2019s New Online Portal"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

On Friday, four days after Georgia Democrats began warning<\/a> that bad actors could abuse the state\u2019s new online portal for canceling voter registrations, the Secretary of State\u2019s Office acknowledged to ProPublica that it had identified multiple such attempts \u2014 including unsuccessful efforts to cancel the registrations of two prominent Republicans, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The confirmation of the attempts to misuse the portal follows separate discoveries by The Associated Press<\/a> and The Current<\/a> that the portal suffered at least two security glitches that briefly exposed voters\u2019 dates of birth, the last four digits of their Social Security numbers and their full driver\u2019s license numbers \u2014 the exact information needed to cancel others\u2019 voter registrations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mike Hassinger, a spokesperson for Georgia\u2019s Secretary of State\u2019s Office, said the state had been monitoring cancellation requests for abuse and that\u2019s how it spotted the ones targeting Greene\u2019s and Raffensperger\u2019s registrations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter<\/a> to receive stories like this one in your inbox<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said that additional protections for less high-profile voters include warnings on the portal that abusing it could be a felony, features built into the website to prevent a single user from submitting multiple cancellations, reviews of requests by county election workers and a postcard that alerts voters whose registration is canceled. He said those safeguards make it extremely difficult to successfully cancel someone else\u2019s voter registration. \u201cCan this site be used to cancel a legitimate voter\u2019s registration?\u201d Hassinger said. \u201cYes, in the same sense that it is possible to win a lottery without buying a ticket. The wind could blow the winning ticket into your pocket. Not likely, but theoretically possible.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hassinger said that Raffensperger was unavailable for comment. Greene\u2019s congressional office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cInstead of apologizing and working to fix the problem, Brad Raffensperger is denying it exists,\u201d said Max Flugrath, director of communications for Fair Fight Action, a voting rights advocacy organization. \u201cIf the secretary of state won\u2019t do what it takes to protect Georgians and their voting access, advocates will do everything we can to ensure voters have the information needed to register, cast a ballot and have their vote count.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The official X account for Georgia Senate Democrats posted that the voter registration cancellation portal \u201cempowers conspiracy theorists and other bad actors to deny Georgians the right to vote.\u201d In response, one commenter replied with<\/a> the birthdays of Republican officials, including Greene and Raffensperger, noting: \u201c\u200b\u200bLots of people have their birthday in the public domain.\u201d One user posted, \u201cOverwhelm them with cancelled well-known Republican’s registrations!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To start the cancellation process on the portal, all users need is a voter\u2019s name, date of birth and county of residence. To finalize the cancellation request, they also must provide the last four digits of the voter\u2019s Social Security number or their full driver\u2019s license number. There\u2019s also an option to fill out a form with that information and print and send it to the voter\u2019s county election office or the Georgia Secretary of State\u2019s Office. Hassinger said that election workers would not approve any paper request that lacked a Social Security number or driver\u2019s license number.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The portal warns users that impersonating someone to cancel a voter registration is a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a $100,000 fine. Hassinger said the Secretary of State\u2019s Office was consulting with in-house legal experts about whether to seek charges for the individuals who had attempted to cancel Raffensperger\u2019s and Greene\u2019s registrations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Hassinger, information submitted to the portal is forwarded to the county election office where the voter is registered; workers there make the call about whether to approve the cancellation request. If they do, a postcard is sent to the voter\u2019s address warning them that they will be removed unless the voter responds. A voter who missed the postcard and then tried to vote could still cast a provisional ballot, he said, which would still be counted once the voter attested that they had not intended for their registration to be canceled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The July 29 launch of the portal came on the heels of legislation in 2021<\/a> and 2024<\/a> that has made it easier for Georgia residents to challenge voter registrations. Right-wing activists have challenged tens of thousands of voters<\/a> in the state, though that process is different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hassinger said the cancellation website has built-in features that should prevent one user from submitting numerous cancellation requests. He also said the Secretary of State\u2019s Office launched the site at the suggestion of its IT department, to make it easier and more secure for voters to cancel their registration when they move out of the state. He said the effort was independent of any of the provisions in the recent legislation or pressure from right-wing voter registration challengers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The federally mandated process for election officials to remove inactive registrations takes years, with elections officials required to attempt to contact voters to verify that they have moved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hassinger said that the security measures of the site have proven effective, and because of that there have not been discussions about changing them. However, he said that there have been talks about improving software rollouts in the future, including potentially doing additional testing, bringing more coding in-house and increasing the budget for such work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hassinger also said the portal is more secure than the previous ways of canceling a voter\u2019s registration, which required sensitive personal information to be sent via unencrypted emails or the mail, which could make tempting targets for identity thieves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe want to protect voters\u2019 personally identifiable information,\u201d Hassinger said. \u201cThat\u2019s part of running secure elections, and that\u2019s the job that we take very seriously.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Friday, four days after Georgia Democrats began warning that bad actors could abuse the state\u2019s new online portal for canceling voter registrations, the Secretary of State\u2019s Office acknowledged to ProPublica that it had identified multiple such attempts \u2014 including unsuccessful efforts to cancel the registrations of two prominent Republicans, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":201371,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15957],"tags":[8549,8685],"class_list":["post-202750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-your-vote","tag-brad-raffensperger","tag-marjorie-taylor-greene","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=202750"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202750\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=202750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=202750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thegeorgiasun.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=202750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}