ATLANTA (AP) — An election board in one of Georgia's largest counties has voted to start charging people who challenge the eligibility of voters for the cost of notifying the challenged voters.
The Cobb County Board of Elections and Registrations voted 4-1 on Tuesday to adopt the rule. Debbie Fisher, a Republican member of the board, was the only vote against the rule.
Republican activists are challenging thousands of voters in Georgia as part 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 address, 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.
Democrats have been pushing to start charging for each challenge filed, in part as an effort to deter people from targeting hundred or thousands of voters using software programs such as EagleAI or IV3 that facilitate mass challenges. A 2021 Georgia law specifically says one person can challenge an unlimited number of voters in their own county.
In suburban Atlanta's Cobb County, a onetime Republican bastion that now produces Democratic majorities, the board voted only to charge for the cost of printing the challenge notice and for postage to mail it, likely to be less than a dollar per challenge. But that could add up. Cobb County Elections Director Tate Fall has estimated that it cost about $1,600 to mail out notices from one batch of 2,472 challenges filed last month.
Democrats have also wanted counties to charge challengers for staff time to research and process challenges. But Daniel White, a lawyer for the board, said Tuesday that he concluded that the board couldn't do that unless state law is changed to grant specific authorization. However, he said he concluded the board has the inherent power to charge for sending notices, in the same way a court has the inherent power to charge someone for serving notice of a lawsuit on the defendants.
“If you’re talking about 3,000 voters being challenged and notice having to go out to 3,000 voters being challenged, that really increases your costs," White said.
But Republicans opposed the measure. Fisher called it “egregious" and “just wrong” to charge people for exercising their challenge rights.
Cobb County Republican Party Chairwoman Salleigh Grubbs said the board is failing to do its job of ensuring clean voter rolls, while challengers are stepping in to help.
“When the Board of Elections is trying to charge people for doing the job they should be doing, that’s a disgrace," Grubbs said.
The board also adopted other rules around challenges, saying it won't accept challenges against people who have already been moved to the inactive voter list. For people who have moved, federal law says Georgia can only cancel an inactive registration if a voter doesn’t respond to a mailing and then doesn’t vote in two following federal general elections. That process takes years. Challengers have been targeting inactive voters for quicker removal.
Counties are making rules in part because the state hasn’t issued guidelines to counties on handling challenges. That's leading to differences in how counties handle the same types of challenges.
An Associated Press survey of Georgia’s 40 largest counties found more than 18,000 voters were challenged in 2023 and 2024, although counties rejected most challenges. Hundreds of thousands more were challenged in 2020, 2021 and 2022.
A new law that took effect July 1 could lead to a surge in challenges by making it easier for challengers to meet the legal burden to remove someone. Some groups have sued to block the Georgia measure, arguing it violates federal law.
FILE - Signs to guide voters are posted outside a Cobb County polling station on the first day of early voting, in Marietta, Ga., Oct. 17, 2022. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart, File)
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine made a new call Saturday on the West to allow it to strike deeper into Russia after a meeting between U.S. and British leaders a day earlier produced no visible shift in their policy on the use of long-range weapons.
The renewed appeal came as Kyiv said Russia launched more drone and artillery attacks into Ukraine overnight.
“Russian terror begins at weapons depots, airfields and military bases inside the Russian Federation,” Ukrainian presidential adviser Andriy Yermak said Saturday. “Permission to strike deep into Russia will speed up the solution.”
Ukrainian officials have repeatedly called on allies to greenlight the use of Western-provided long-range weapons to strike targets deep inside Russian territory. So far, the U.S. has allowed Kyiv to use American-provided weapons only in a limited area inside Russia’s border with Ukraine.
Discussions on allowing long-range strikes were believed to be on the table when U.S. President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer met in Washington on Friday but no decision was announced immediately.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been pressing the U.S. and other allies to allow his forces to use Western weapons to target air bases and launch sites farther afield as Russia has stepped up assaults on Ukraine’s electricity grid and utilities before winter.
He did not directly comment on the meeting Saturday morning, but said that more than 70 Russian drones had been launched into Ukraine overnight. The Ukrainian air force later said that 76 Russian drones had been sighted, of which 72 were shot down.
“We need to boost our air defense and long-range capabilities to protect our people,” Zelenskyy wrote on social media. “We are working on this with all of Ukraine’s partners.”
Other overnight attacks saw one person killed by Russian artillery fire as energy infrastructure was targeted in Ukraine’s Sumy region. A 54-year-old driver was killed and seven more people were hospitalized, Ukraine’s Ministry of Energy said.
Another three people died Saturday in a Russian strike on an agricultural enterprise in the front-line town of Huliaipole in the Zaporizhzhia region, Gov. Ivan Fedorov said.
Meanwhile, officials in Moscow have continued to make public statements warning that long-range strikes would provoke further escalation between Russia and the West. The remarks are in line with the narrative the Kremlin has promoted since early in the war, accusing NATO countries of de-facto participation in the conflict and threatening a response.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told state news agency Tass on Saturday that the U.S. and British governments were pushing the conflict, which began with Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, toward “poorly controlled escalation.”
Biden on Friday brushed off similar comments by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who said on Thursday that allowing long-range strikes “would mean that NATO countries, the United States and European countries, are at war with Russia.”
Asked what he thought about Putin’s threat, Biden answered, “I don’t think much about Vladimir Putin.”
Russian and Ukrainian officials also announced on Saturday a prisoner swap brokered by the United Arab Emirates. It included 206 prisoners on both sides, including Russians captured in Ukraine’s incursion in the Kursk region.
The swap is the eighth of its kind since the beginning of 2024, and puts the total number of POWs exchanged at 1,994. Previous exchanges were also brokered by the UAE.
Both sides released images of soldiers traveling to meet friends and family, with Zelenskyy commenting, “Our people are home."
Elsewhere, Russia’s Defense Ministry said that 19 Ukrainian drones had been shot down over the country’s Kursk and Belgorod regions.
A woman also died Saturday after a Ukrainian shell hit her home in the border village of Bezlyudovka, Belgorod regional Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov said.
Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
A Ukrainian poses for a selfie as he is greeted after being released in a prisoner exchange at an undisclosed location in Ukraine, Saturday Sept. 14, 2024. (Ukrainian Presidential Press Office via AP)
Ukrainians pose for a photo after being released in a prisoner exchange at an undisclosed location in Ukraine, Saturday Sept. 14, 2024. (Ukrainian Presidential Press Office via AP)
Ukrainians pose for a photo after being released in a prisoner exchange at an undisclosed location in Ukraine, Saturday Sept. 14, 2024. (Ukrainian Presidential Press Office via AP)
Ukrainians pose for a photo after being released in a prisoner exchange at an undisclosed location in Ukraine, Saturday Sept. 14, 2024. (Ukrainian Presidential Press Office via AP)
A Ukrainian reacts after being released in a prisoner exchange at an undisclosed location in Ukraine, Saturday Sept. 14, 2024. (Ukrainian Presidential Press Office via AP)
Ukrainians react after being released in a prisoner exchange at an undisclosed location in Ukraine, Saturday Sept. 14, 2024. (Ukrainian Presidential Press Office via AP)
A Ukrainian serviceman, left, is greeted after being released in a prisoner exchange at an undisclosed location in Ukraine, Saturday Sept. 14, 2024. (Ukrainian Presidential Press Office via AP)
