This story was updated at 2:05 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 19, 2019, with information about the Fair Fight Action statement.

After Georgia purged more than 300,000 voters off its registered voter list, the Georgia Secretary of State is giving about 22,000 people more time to get back on the registered list.

Secretary Brad Raffensperger's office said today that people who last had contact with the voter registration system between January and May 2012 are allowed to get back on the list.

"We are proactively taking additional steps to prevent any confusion come the day of the election," Raffensperger said in a press release. "We are taking the unprecedented step to give certain individuals who have been identified as having moved and in need of updating their information additional time to vote or contact their county elections office to update their registration."



The 22,000 registered voters had voted or had some other type of contact with the voter-registration system in early 2012 but not since.

When the state started to clean up the registered voters list in June 2015, it searched for the registrations of people who had not voted or had any other type of contact with their county elections office.

That kind of contact includes submitting an updated registration, requesting an absentee ballot or signing a petition.

The state looked at those records as far back as June 2012 and those who had no activity were classified as inactive voters and were removed from the registered voter list.

Raffensperger's office is now extending that timeline to the beginning of 2012 and giving about 22,000 a chance to get back on the voter list.

After Raffensperger's announcement, Fair Fight Action released a statement of its own, calling the secretary's announcement a "massive error."

The organization said the error "should send chills down the spine of every Georgian who cares about voting rights."

Earlier this week, a federal judge ruled that Georgia's planned mass purge of its voting rolls was legal following an emergency request from a voting rights group founded by Democrat Stacey Abrams.

The motion was filed by Fair Fight Action in U.S. District Court, just hours before the secretary of state's office planned to begin the purge of inactive voter registrations.

In October, Raffensperger released a list of over 313,000 voters whose registrations were at risk of being canceled, about 4% of the state's total registered voters. Notices were mailed in November giving those voters 30 days to respond in order to keep their registration intact.

A 1993 federal law requires states to maintain their voter-registration list. Georgia is one of nine states that cancel the registration of people who have not had contact with the registration system for a period of time and have not responded to mail sent to their last known address asking for confirmation.



Contact Patrick Filbin at pfilbin@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6476. Follow him on Twitter @PatrickFilbin.