Federal Court Upholds Georgia’s Citizenship Verification Process

Atlanta - In federal court in the Northern District of Georgia today, U.S. District Court Judge Eleanor Ross granted Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger's motion to dismiss all claims challenging Georgia's citizenship verification process.

"Ensuring that only U.S. citizens vote in our elections is critically important to secure and accurate elections," said Secretary Raffensperger. "Georgia's citizenship verification process is common sense and it works. With this ruling, we are able to continue ensuring that only U.S. citizens are voting in our elections."

The ruling in federal court today follows the ruling in favor of Georgia's citizenship verification process in the Fair Fight Action case in 2022.

The case that Judge Ross dismissed today was brought by New Georgia Project, Common Cause Georgia, GALEO Latino Community Development Fund, ProGeorgia State Table, Asian-Americans Advancing Justice - Atlanta, and the Georgia Coalition for the People's Agenda. It included claims that Georgia's citizenship verification process violated the U.S. Constitution, the Voting Rights Act, and the National Voter Registration Act.

Judge Ross ruled in favor of Secretary Raffensperger on every count of their complaint, meaning that Georgia's citizenship verification processes will remain in place for the 2024 election.

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Georgia is recognized as a national leader in elections. It was the first state in the country to implement the trifecta of automatic voter registration, at least 17 days of early voting (which has been called the "gold standard"), and no-excuse absentee voting. Georgia continues to set records for voter turnout and election participation, seeing the largest increase in average turnout of any other state in the 2018 midterm election and record turnout in 2020, and 2022. 2022 achieved the largest single day of in-person early voting turnout in Georgia midterm history utilizing Georgia's secure, paper ballot voting system. Most recently, Georgia ranked #1 for Election Integrity by the Heritage Foundation, a top ranking for Voter Accessibility by the Center for Election Innovation & Research and tied for number one in Election Administration by the Bipartisan Policy Center.