Two counties in Georgia will be required to undo a decision that removed more than 4,000 voters from the rolls before the January 5 U.S. Senate runoff elections, a federal judge ruled Monday.
Judge Leslie Abrams Gardner, the sister of former gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, found that the counties seemed to have improperly relied on unverified change-of-address data to invalidate the more than 4,000 registrations in Muscogee County and 150 registrations from Ben Hill County.
President-elect Joe Biden won Muscogee County in November, while President Trump carried Ben Hill County, according to Politico.
Majority Forward, a group led by Democratic Party attorney Marc Elias, filed the suit in response to a challenge to the voter registrations on December 14 after a local voter found that the registrations seemed to match U.S. Postal Service change-of-address records. The voter, Ralph Russell, said he believed that signified that the voters had moved out of Georgia, though Democrats argued that the postal data is not an adequate indicator that a voter has given up their local residence.
