Big Georgia county to start charging some costs to people who challenge the eligibility of voters

ATLANTA — An election board in one of Georgia's largest counties has voted to start charging people who challenge the eligibility of voters for the cost of notifying the challenged voters.

The Cobb County Board of Elections and Registrations voted 4-1 on Tuesday to adopt the rule. Debbie Fisher, a Republican member of the board, was the only vote against the rule.

Republican activists are challenging thousands of voters in Georgia as part a wide-ranging national effort coordinated by Donald Trump's allies to take names off voting rolls. Most of the people they are targeting have moved away from their old address, and the activists argue that letting those names stay on the rolls invites fraud. But Democrats and liberal voting rights activists argue Republicans are challenging voters either to remove Democrats or to sow doubt about the accuracy of elections in advance of 2024 presidential voting.

Democrats have been pushing to start charging for each challenge filed, in part as an effort to deter people from targeting hundred or thousands of voters using software programs such as EagleAI or IV3 that facilitate mass challenges. A 2021 Georgia law specifically says one person can challenge an unlimited number of voters in their own county.

In suburban Atlanta's Cobb County, a onetime Republican bastion that now produces Democratic majorities, the board voted only to charge for the cost of printing the challenge notice and for postage to mail it, likely to be less than a dollar per challenge. But that could add up. Cobb County Elections Director Tate Fall has estimated that it cost about $1,600 to mail out notices from one batch of 2,472 challenges filed last month.

Democrats have also wanted counties to charge challengers for staff time to research and process challenges. But Daniel White, a lawyer for the board, said Tuesday that he concluded that the board couldn't do that unless state law is changed to grant specific authorization. However, he said he concluded the board has the inherent power to charge for sending notices, in the same way a court has the inherent power to charge someone for serving notice of a lawsuit on the defendants.

''If you're talking about 3,000 voters being challenged and notice having to go out to 3,000 voters being challenged, that really increases your costs," White said.

Cobb County Republican Party Chairwoman Salleigh Grubbs said the board is failing to do its job of ensuring clean voter rolls, while challengers are stepping in to help.

''When the Board of Elections is trying to charge people for doing the job they should be doing, that's a disgrace," Grubbs said.

The board also adopted other rules around challenges, saying it won't accept challenges against people who have already been moved to the inactive voter list. For people who have moved, federal law says Georgia can only cancel an inactive registration if a voter doesn't respond to a mailing and then doesn't vote in two following federal general elections. That process takes years. Challengers have been targeting inactive voters for quicker removal.

Counties are making rules in part because the state hasn't issued guidelines to counties on handling challenges. That's leading to differences in how counties handle the same types of challenges.

An Associated Press survey of Georgia's 40 largest counties found more than 18,000 voters were challenged in 2023 and 2024, although counties rejected most challenges. Hundreds of thousands more were challenged in 2020, 2021 and 2022.