FULTON COUNTY, Georgia (LifeSiteNews) – At least one Republican voter was nearly prevented from early voting in his home state of Georgia after his address on file was changed without his knowledge or consent, LifeSiteNews has learned.
On June 28, the voter, a registered Republican, and his wife updated their voter registration information to reflect their current address in Atlanta, which resides in Fulton County, a Democrat stronghold and the state’s largest county. He received a voter precinct card appearing to confirm the registration had been successful and all was in order.
On August 14 and 21, however, he received emails confirming a voter registration application to vote back at his old address in Athens, Georgia, in Clarke County. He missed those notices, describing them to LifeSiteNews as having been “buried” among the numerous unsolicited political emails of election season.
On October 28, the couple attempted in-person early voting in Fulton County, but while the wife was able to cast her ballot without incident, the husband was pulled aside with an “address wrong on screen” notice. After a half-hour of discussion with three election officials who were certain the error was his, he was given the option of casting a provisional in the next 12 hours.
Back at home, the couple had a series of phone conversations with representatives of both counties. The Fulton voter registration representative at first said simply that it appeared he had given the wrong address, and recommended he go back to Clarke County to vote – compliance with which would have meant committing fraud and potentially subjecting himself to all the legal jeopardy that entails.
“Clarke County took you guys back,” the representative said, unable to explain how the switch could have happened.
A Clarke County Board of Elections representative was able to tell them that “it looks like somebody went online on the 21st of August and did a county update for you,” but was unable to identify who. “The only way you’re going to be able to vote in Fulton County, they are going to have to pull you back. We cannot transfer a voter back to that county.”
After the couple made clear that Fulton had insisted that Clarke needed to be the ones to fix the registration, the Clarke representative reached out to them herself, and they ultimately complied.
The husband tells LifeSiteNews that, while he is now thankfully able to vote again, he knows that his isn’t the only such case, and he wants his ordeal to be known so others are aware of what can happen.
“Not everyone is going to have a helpful person like the lady from Athens-Clarke who’ll help them, and many people will find out on Election Day that there’s nothing they can do, and they can’t participate in this close election,” he said.
Georgia is one of the key swing states that could determine who wins the White House. Republican former President Donald Trump currently leads Democrat Vice President Kamala Harris by just 1.1% in the state, according to RaceToTheWH and 2.3% according to RealClearPolitics. “As of October 20, The Cook Political Report, Inside Elections, and Sabato’s Crystal Ball all rated the state as a Toss-up,” Ballotpedia reported.
With fears of election manipulations such as ballot fraud and voter suppression still high after the fever pitch of the 2020 election, interference with even a small fraction of Republicans’ ability to vote could be enough to swing Georgia’s 16 electoral votes from Trump to Harris, which in turn could be enough to put the latter over the 270 Electoral College threshold, depending on the outcomes in similarly close battlegrounds.