In Atlanta, too, lawyers for the New Georgia Project, a nonpartisan voter-registration group, have already begun analyzing the Crosscheck lists made public by the Al Jazeera America investigation. The group’s founder, Rep. Stacey Abrams, who is also the Democratic Party’s leader in the state legislature, has come out strongly against the operation of “the nefarious ‘Interstate Crosscheck’ system, [which] seeks to purge hundreds of thousands of voters in Georgia based on common last names and scant else,” she says. Given the likelihood of common names for African-Americans, Latinos and Asian-Americans, this system is fraught with dangers for eligible voters, Abrams adds.

She is particularly angry that participation in the program was carried out in secret, unlike in North Carolina, where officials publicly proclaimed their hunt for alleged double voters. “If the [secretary of state] believes this is the right thing, then he should present his reasons to the legislature and the voters rather than operating in secret.”

In Kansas, attorney Robert Eye has already crossed swords over voting rights with Secretary of State Kris Kobach, the key promoter of Crosscheck. Eye particularly objects to Kobach’s promise to the other participating states that Kansas will bear all the computing costs of creating the potential purge lists. “Your cost: $0,” according to one of Kobach’s Powerpoint presentations to a convention of state elections directors.

Eye disputes the Crosscheck premise that there are thousands, even millions, of criminal double voters. Since Kobach began promoting Crosscheck, not one Kansan has been convicted of voting twice. “This purported fix to a nonexistent problem truly undermines the franchise,” says Eye. “And it adds insult to injury that an official is using his official position to promote a personal agenda.”

Kobach, who is locked in a tight re-election race, did not respond to requests for comment.