In December 2020, True the Vote helped Georgians to file elector challenges “based on data showing over 364,000 voters appeared to be ineligible to vote due to change in residency.”
Section 21-2-230 of Georgia Code Title 21 states that any elector “of the county or municipality may challenge the right of any other elector of the county or municipality, whose name appears on the list of electors, to vote in an election.”
Nevertheless, Fair Fight Action, the group founded by Stacey Abrams, sued True the Vote for allegedly intimidating voters.
That suit has now been thrown out.
In a 145-page ruling, Judge Steve Jones questioned aspects of TTV’s strategy. But he concluded that “there is no evidence that Defendants’ actions caused (or attempted to cause) any voter to be intimidated, coerced, or threatened in voting.”
According to True the Vote attorney Jake Evans, the decision “establishes that eligibility challenges under Section 230 are a proper method to ensure voter rolls are accurate.”
In a formal statement, True the Vote said that the court has “affirmed that citizens have the right to lawfully petition their government in support of election integrity without fear of persecution or prosecution.”
Critics of the decision bemoan the encouragement that it will give to organizations seeking to expose voter fraud. And the problem is . . . ?
It’s not as if filing a challenge under 230 guarantees success; a board of registrars must still determine whether the challenge is valid. Besides, fighting actual ballot fraud is not an attack upon democracy, but a shoring up.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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4 replies on “Free to Petition”
I’m guessing that the inference here is that there is enough of this kind of thing to change the result of the election. Many courts of law have ruled in many jurisdictions that there was not. This just muddies the water. I think muddying the water is exactly what some people want to do. It’s dangerous. It’s Soviet Style propaganda to just muddy the water and walk away.
If the 2020 election really was not a fraud, what are you afraid of?
True the Vote actually met with Georgia Secretary of State Raffensperger to lay out their findings and ask if there were any problem with how they were planning to file the challenges, including the data sources and it being done by Georgia residents as specified under Georgia state law. He gave them a green light. But 3 days after the challenges were filed, Raffensperger joined Stacy Abram’s political organization in filing suit against TTV for harassment. They were then joined by a bevy of DOJ lawyers. Fortunately the DOJ was providing quantity, not quality. What a HUGE waste of tax dollars. The plaintiffs against TTV and the Georgia residents that had filed a suit on being intimidated did not know who they were suing, and had never actually spoken to anyone that was named in the lawsuit. The only intimidation that they could claim was that state law was explicitly followed using the only information that was readily available to the general public to try to decide voter validity. It was laughable. An expensive, time-consuming, soul and democracy-crushing joke, geared to suppression of things that might impede the ballot-stuffing mechanism that has been so carefully and expensively installed. 14 lawyers aligned against a self-funded volunteer voting integrity organization. And Georgia’s despicable Secretary of State Raffensperger lending his name and office to the effort, although he never deigned to show his face at the trial, where he might have been asked about his actually signing off on the challenges.
I suspect he was either paid off or threatened and was participating to protect his job and Constitutional rights and state law be damned.
Of note, 364,000 challenges for invalid voter registrations for the 2020 election in Georgia, under the guidelines established by the state government, input by Georgia residents with guidance by True the Vote, as specified under law established by the Georgia legislature. Not a one of them actually looked at by the state of Georgia per Brad Raffensperger’s instructions to the election boards of all 150+ Georgia counties. But every one of those invalid voter registrations that had a vote entered had those invalid votes counted in 2020. And then certified by Raffensperger.