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 in federal court in Atlanta, arguing that a law passed earlier this year by lawmakers unfairly discriminates against homeless people and voters registered at nonresidential addresses.

State Senate Ethics Committee Max Burns, a Republican from Sylvania, said he’s confident Senate Bill 189, which partly took effect in July, will hold up in court.

“The legal challenges to SB 189 were anticipated. It was crafted with the intent to withstand any such challenges, and we are confident that the state’s position will prevail, ensuring SB 189 remains the law of the land," Burns, who sponsored the law, said in a statement Tuesday.

Part of the law 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 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 they don’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 state or federal law for challenging a voter solely because they provided a nonresidential address.

“Residing at a premises deemed to ‘residential’ in character is not required by the Georgia Constitution or any other Georgia law respecting voter eligibility in the state of Georgia,” the lawsuit states.

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.

The suit warns that it's unclear whether counties will hold mail for homeless people, that there isn't a special homeless category on voter registration forms, and that counties may unilaterally change mailing addresses for existing voters or reject new applications from homeless people who don't list the county office.

“Eligible voters who are unhoused, housing-insecure or otherwise living at a location with a nonstandard address — or no address at all — retain their right to vote regardless of the nature or status of their residence,” the suit states.

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.