We have another voter roll audit!
Earlier this month, the Georgia Department of Audits & Accounts (“DOAA”) published an audit of Georgia’s approximately 8.0 million registered voters. The report found “2,570 potential non-citizen registrations that were not initially flagged by county offices . . . Of the 2,570 registrations, 407 (16%) have been used to vote.”
It’s important to emphasize that these are potential noncitizens. That means the auditors couldn’t confirm citizenship as it could for all other Georgia registrants. It does not mean that the auditors confirmed that they are noncitizens.
It’s also important to contextualize the information. Again, Georgia has approximately 8 million registered voters. And in 2024, President Trump received 2,663,117 votes in Georgia, and Vice President Harris received 2,548,017 votes.
When I post to social media about the results of voter roll audits (which are housed here at Declare), most people appreciate that states and counties take the initiative to affirmatively audit their voter rolls for noncitizens. I do, however, occasionally hear from people who would prefer these audits come from outside the election office.
Such commenters should hopefully be happy with this audit. The DOAA did the audit at the direction of the state legislature (specifically, the Senate Appropriations Committee), not any election office. Georgia election officials had a chance to respond to the audit, but they did not control its review.
The DOAA audit, in turn, prompted the Georgia Secretary of State’s office to do yet another audit on its own of possible noncitizen voters. According to a news release by Secretary Brad Raffensperger (emphasis added),
“Building on this [DOAA] audit, the Secretary of State’s Office recently completed its own citizenship audit of the voter rolls. Taking advantage of the expanded use of the Department of Homeland Security’s SAVE database, the Secretary of State’s Office identified 432 potential noncitizens who have voted at some point since 1996, including records identified by DOAA. Of those, 204 had already been moved to ‘Pending Citizenship’ as a result of earlier Secretary of State’s Office citizenship audits of the voter rolls. The remaining 228 records were identified through a combination of DOAA’s work and expanded use of the USCIS SAVE database.”
Since 2021, Georgia has done more noncitizen-specific audits of its voter rolls than any other state in the country. Each audit has found the same thing: Out of the millions of registered voters, there are some potential non-citizens on the voter rolls, and there are some who have potentially cast a ballot in an election. But Georgia’s strong controls keep this number to a very, very small number as a percentage of Georgia’s total voters.
Georgia’s initiative on this front should be applauded. And it — together with recent efforts from states like Utah — should serve as a model for other states.
As a last note: The DOAA audit assesses far more than just noncitizens. It is a very thorough review of Georgia’s voter registration practices. Its findings are generally very positive. The full report is a great read for anyone who wants to better understand voter registration in Georgia. The Atlanta Journal Constitution (Georgia’s largest newspaper) covered the recent audits in a more succinct format.
We will continue to update Declare’s election integrity map as states and counties report additional audits.
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