Suit seeks to overturn Georgia law on homeless voter registration and voter challenges

ATLANTA — A new lawsuit seeks to overturn two provisions of a Georgia election law related to voter challenges.

The Georgia State Conference of the NAACP and the Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda filed suit on Tuesday arguing that a law passed earlier this year by state lawmakers unfairly discriminates against homeless people and people registered at nonresidential addresses.

Part of Senate Bill 189, which took effect July 1, lets people file legal challenges to the eligibility of voters registered at nonresidential addresses. County election boards decide whether to reject the challenge or uphold it. Supporters of the law argue many people are incorrectly registered at business addresses or even in empty lots instead of where they actually live. That means someone may be voting in the wrong precinct and the wrong local government and state legislative elections.

Some voter challengers, for example, argue that no college student should be able to register to vote at their college dormitory because the student doesn’t intend to live there indefinitely, even though voting officials disagree and allowing students to register at college has long been the practice.

Those opposing the law argue that college dormitories, senior and nursing facilities and homeless shelters may be zoned as nonresidential, saying there’s no basis in law for challenging someone solely based on the voter providing a nonresidential address.

The plaintiffs also seek to overturn a separate section of the new law that takes effect Jan. 1 that governs where homeless people register. That section mandates that homeless people use their county’s election office to receive election-related mail. That could, in some cases, mean long journeys for people to retrieve mail including absentee ballots and challenges to their eligibility. The lawsuit says the law is unfair because all other Georgia voters can receive mail at their address of choice, even if it’s not where they reside.

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

Republican activists are challenging tens of thousands of Georgia voters as part of 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 addresses, 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.