Georgia elections chief hints at organized effort behind ballot harvesting, registering noncitizens

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said his office is investigating ballot harvesting and the registration of noncitizens to vote, both of which he suggests may have been orchestrated by third-party organizations.

His office did a citizenship audit of Georgia's voter rolls and found more than 1,600 noncitizens who tried registering to vote, Raffensperger told the John Solomon Reports podcast Tuesday.

"[W]hen Stacey Abrams ran for governor four years ago, she talked about the blue wave," Raffensperger recalled, "And she said, 'That's the people who are documented and undocumented,' i.e., that means the noncitizens ... she wanted them to be able to vote in our elections, and absolutely not. I've been pushing back on that. I think that's an incredibly critical issue, not just for us here in Georgia, but for the entire country. Only American citizens should vote." The secretary of state also addressed ballot harvesting, explaining how it can lead to voters being coerced to cast their ballots for certain candidates.

As with noncitizen voting, they are looking into background organizational support, specifically who paid the harvesters and how much.

" True the Vote founder Catherine Engelbrecht, whose organization's complaint led to Raffensperger's investigation into the ballot harvesting, told "Just the News, Not Noise" TV show cohosts John Solomon and Amanda Head on Tuesday that ballot harvesting has been the norm for a long time in many communities.

"So that's why we really prefer the term 'ballot trafficking' over 'ballot harvesting.' And we're focusing on voter abuse, because that's what's happening here. This is an abuse of a process that has to be stopped." Engelbrecht said that in the counties where True the Vote has focused its ballot harvesting investigations - such as Fulton County in Georgia, Milwaukee County in Wisconsin, Wayne County in Michigan, Maricopa and Yuma counties in Arizona, and Philadelphia County in Pennsylvania - they have have uncovered "Disturbingly consistent" patterns.

Gina Swoboda, Executive Director of Voter Reference Foundation, told the John Solomon Reports podcast on Tuesday that outdated voter rolls, ballot drop boxes, ballot harvesting, and noncitizens voting are all detrimental to election integrity.

https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/georgia-sos-brad-raffensperger-organizations-possibly-behind-registering