By MARK NIESSE The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
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ATLANTA — Georgia election officials plan to cancel about 455,000 inactive voter registrations this summer, one of the largest registration removals in U.S. history.

More than half the registrations scheduled for cancellation were identified by a 24-state organization called ERIC, which reports when a voter has moved and is no longer eligible to vote in Georgia.

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The mass cancellation by the Georgia secretary of state’s office arrives as conservative critics of the state’s voter registration list allege it’s inaccurate and vulnerable to voter fraud. They say ERIC hasn’t been effective in finding outdated registrations among the state’s 8.3 million registered voters.

State Elections Director Blake Evans said the size of this year’s registration removal process shows that ERIC — the Electronic Registration Information Center — works.

“We want to do everything we can within the law to have the cleanest voter list possible,” Evans said. “ERIC is the best tool out there right now that gives us valuable information you can’t get anywhere else.”

Of the 455,000 registrations targeted for removal, most belong to people who appear to have moved either by filling out change-of-address forms, registering to vote in another state or getting a driver’s license in another state. ERIC identified 255,000 of those registrations for Georgia election officials.

This is the first year that voter registrations flagged by ERIC in 2021 are eligible for cancellation. Under Georgia law, voters become “inactive” when they appear to have moved, and then they can be canceled if they miss the next two general elections.

In response to conservative opposition to ERIC, Republican legislators introduced a bill this year to withdraw Georgia from the organization. Nine other Republican-run states have quit ERIC in recent years, including Alabama, Florida and Texas. The proposal stalled in the Georgia House but could be revived.

In addition to the voters found by ERIC who have moved, another 100,000 registrations set for cancellation belong to voters who haven’t participated in Georgia elections for the last nine years or longer. Through Georgia’s “use it or lose it” law, voters lose their registrations if they don’t have any contact with election officials for five years and then miss two general elections.

Voting rights advocates said they’re concerned that eligible voters could lose their registrations and their ability to vote.

“You shouldn’t be taken off the rolls because you didn’t vote,” said Helen Butler, executive director for the Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda, a civil rights organization. “When you look at the voter registration statistics, there are a lot of people registered to vote who just don’t make it to the polls because they’re dissatisfied with the choices. They decide not to vote, and that’s their right.”

The final 100,000 registrations scheduled for cancellation were made inactive because election mail to those voters was returned as undeliverable.

Helen Strahl, a conservative voter who has challenged the eligibility of hundreds of Chatham County voters, said election officials have neglected to cancel invalid registrations over the years.