Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Tuesday unveiled a four-year effort targeting hundreds of thousands of inactive voters on the state’s voter registration rolls for removal. 

There are nearly a quarter of a million people on Georgia’s voter rolls who have not participated in the election process since 2019, according to Raffensperger. Georgia Republicans came under fire from President Donald Trump and his allies during the 2020 election due to concerns that they sidelined worries that the state’s digital voting system had possible fraud problems. 

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Raffensperger, also viewed as a possible Republican contender to challenge Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) during the 2026 election, revealed he plans to send mailing notices to 218,951 registered voters, giving them an opportunity to update their inactive status. If they fail to do so or do not vote in the 2026 or 2028 general elections, the voters will be purged from the state’s rolls in 2029. 

“Every voter in Georgia is in control of his or her voter registration status,” Raffensperger said in a statement. “We conduct every phase of the list maintenance process as publicly as possible, and in accordance with State and Federal law, because transparency helps shore up public trust in the accuracy and integrity of entire election process.”

“Clean voter rolls mean clean elections,” he added. “My promise to Georgia voters is elections that are free, fair, and fast – and we’re doing just that.”

The announcement comes as Raffensperger has been pressured by some state Republicans to do more to address election security fears centered on the state’s digital Dominion Voting Systems, which voters use to cast their ballots in elections. 

The Blue-Ribbon Study Committee on Election Procedures, a new task force backed by Georgia House Speaker Jon Burns and state Rep. Tim Fleming (R), met for the first time earlier this month. Many lawmakers argue that relying on paper ballots, counted by hand, is more secure than electronic voting, which they claim is more vulnerable to fraud. 

“If we don’t have trust in our elections, we don’t have a country,” said Field Searcy, cofounder of Georgians for Truth. “If our elections are not secure and trustworthy, it’s all a farce.”

Raffensperger has pushed back against attempts to require poll workers to hand-count paper ballots. However, amid concerns, the secretary of state’s office earlier this month conducted an audit of a local election that Raffensperger said determined the digital voting system contributed to essentially zero fraud. 

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“The Secretary of State’s office is pleased to report that the audit confirmed the outcome of the contest,” his office wrote in a press release of the audit targeting District 3’s Democratic contest for Public Service Commissioner. “County election officials audited 282 batches of ballots. Of those, 280 batches (99.3%) matched the original machine count exactly. The two batches that showed minor discrepancies were within the expected margin of human variation during hand counting and did not affect the outcome of the race.”

A 2024 state-wide elections audit determined that illegal voting was also rare, reporting that only 20 noncitizens were registered to vote, nine of whom had done so years ago, and 11 of whom had never actually voted.