MACON, Ga. — Georgia's Secretary of State Office re-emphasized their election integrity message to voters in a press conference Wednesday. They say they're working to make sure the state's voter rolls are clean and secure.
Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said one tool they're relying on is a citizenship audit. Raffensperger's office said after completing a recent audit, it removed 20 non-citizen voters from its rolls statewide; that came from a total of 8.2 million registrations.
"Their names have been sent to local district attorneys for prosecution; we will not tolerate non-citizen voting here in the state of Georgia," Raffensperger said.
He says those registrations were linked to seven counties, including Bibb County. Macon Bibb Board of Elections Supervisor Thomas Gillon said the county questioned one person but the person was able to provide proof of citizenship, allowing them to remain on the rolls.
Gillon said information on why the person was not confirmed as a non-citizen on the rolls was not disclosed to his office. This comes a month after the Georgia's state election board questioned the county's handling of voter eligibility challenges.
"We were made aware earlier this week and so we did our research and we had one name on our list from from that group and that particular voter was able to furnish a certificate of naturalization, so they are officially a citizen," Gillon said. "So they are no longer canceled."
Raffensperger says after cross referencing jury duty records and federal data, his office found the 20 people filed an affidavit to be excused from jury duty, swearing to be non-citizens.
"We go through the federal database that then verifies if you are foreign born, have you naturalized and become an American citizen; so we connect to that but we get all the information that we need to make that seamless with our new voter registration system," Raffensperger said.
Now, Raffensperger says his office is also investigating another 156 voters whose citizenship status has not been confirmed.
"That's why we're gonna do personalized conversations with people, go out to see them, so we have proof of citizenship," Raffensperger said.
Both elections leaders say they want voters to have confidence in their audits.
"Every time we've done that the text on the ballots that print when you print out the ballot has matched the QR code that's on the ballot and so the QR code is saying exactly what the text says," Gillon said.
Gillon says his office has followed that process since 2020. Raffensperger says the citizenship audits will occur on an annual basis.