New Data: Black Voters Most at Risk in Georgia’s Voter Purge

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger is gearing up to remove nearly 500,000 voters from the rolls. It’s one of the largest voter purges in U.S. history and it comes ahead of the 2026 midterm election.

Raffensperger calls it routine maintenance of outdated records. And yes, many voters on the list have likely moved to other states.

But Fair Fight conducted an analysis using voter registration data from other states to identify people on Georgia’s purge list who voted in another state in 2022 or 2024 – likely indicating they no longer live in Georgia.

Once those voters were removed from the purge list, what’s left is even more alarming: the remaining voters flagged for removal are disproportionately Black. Many are likely to still live in Georgia and remain eligible to vote.

Secretary Raffensperger used different ways to categorize voters on his purge list, like voters whose mail was returned as undeliverable or voters who had no contact with election officials over two election cycles.

Fair Fight’s analysis of those categories of Georgia’s purge list – after excluding voters who cast ballots in other states – found:

• Black voters make up 39% of the “Returned Mail” category (up from 36% before removing voters who likely moved out of state)

• Black voters make up 44% of the “No Contact” group (up from 40% before removing voters who likely moved out of state)

For context: Georgia’s registered voter population is about 31% Black and 51% white – meaning Black voters are overrepresented in both categories flagged for removal.

Black-Led Newsroom Spotlights the Disparities

Capital B Atlanta, a Black-led newsroom focused on issues impacting Black communities, spotlighted Fair Fight’s findings. Their reporting underscored the disproportionate threat to Black Georgians – especially younger voters – who are still eligible but now risk being removed from the rolls.

As Fair Fight CEO Lauren Groh-Wargo told Capital B Atlanta:

• This purge list “disproportionately targets Black Georgians who likely still live here.”

• Voters aged 18–34 make up the largest age group flagged (31%), followed by those aged 35–44 (26%).

• “Once again, politicians are rushing to remove voters based on unreliable data – and young Black voters are bearing the brunt.”

This isn’t new. Then–Secretary of State (now governor) Brian Kemp removed over 1.4 million voters from the rolls between 2012 and 2018 – including nearly 670,000 in 2017 alone. In 2018, he put 53,000 registrations on hold to conduct an “exact match” signature check – 70% of those flagged were Black.

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In 2019, after a purge canceled more than 300,000 voter registrations, the state of Georgia reinstated roughly 22,000 who were wrongfully removed after Fair Fight Action exposed errors in how the state labeled voters as inactive.

Flawed Data is Fueling the Purge

The Secretary of State’s office relies on undelivered mail and the U.S. Postal Service’s National Change of Address (NCOA) database to flag many voters for their purge list – but neither of those data sources are reliable.

Returned mail doesn’t prove someone moved. It could result from an incomplete address, the building lacking individual mailboxes, or USPS delivery errors. Georgia is the second-worst state for mail service by USPS. And when it comes to the National Change of Address (NCOA) database, even USPS says it can’t guarantee the accuracy of the data.

What You Can Do

Fair Fight has launched a new, easy-to-use voter purge lookup tool so Georgians can check if they’re on the list – and take action before it’s too late.

Check your status with our new lookup tool today: FairFight.com/StopThePurges

We’re spreading the word through email, texts, phone calls, ads, and social media – but we need your help. Share the tool with your friends, your family, your group chats, your neighborhood group.

Protect your vote – and the votes of your community.

Fair Fight Team

Paid for by Fair Fight, www.fairfight.com, not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.

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