This is a press release from the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office.
Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger highlighted the findings of an independent audit of Georgia’s voter registration and list-maintenance systems, which prove that Georgia is the best state in the nation for secure, accurate, and accessible elections.
Georgia’s voter rolls achieved 99.9% accuracy. According to the report, auditors estimated no more than 0.1% of the voter registration records would have allowed an individual to vote despite an unverified identity, invalid residential addresses, or unverified eligibility.
The Georgia Department of Audits and Accounts, following a request from the Georgia Senate Appropriations Committee, found that voter-roll processes administered by the Secretary of State and Georgia’s county election directors comply with statutory requirements and align with best practices.
“Georgia runs the cleanest elections in the country because we’ve spent years doing the hard work to secure our systems, verify our voter rolls, and make sure only eligible American citizens can vote,” said Secretary Raffensperger. “Now the General Assembly confirms what Georgians already know: our safeguards work, our voter lists are best in class, and Georgia elections are free, fair, and fast.”
The audit examined Georgia’s voter-registration and list-maintenance procedures, focusing on address and identity validation, list-maintenance policies, statutory compliance, and alignment with best practices.
Among the report’s findings:
- Auditors found that just 0.1% of the voter registration records would have allowed an individual to vote with an unverified identity, address, or citizenship.
- Independent verification confirmed that 99.8% of nearly 7.9 million voter registrations contained a Georgia REAL ID, with 98% REAL ID coverage across the voter list
- More than 98% of voter registrations are checked for citizenship at the time of registration using DDS REAL ID data.
- Georgia’s automated safeguards that verify voter identity and eligibility prevent invalid residential addresses from being added to the voter rolls.
- State and county election officials maintain accurate voter rolls by using high-quality external data on deaths, felonies, and other eligibility changes in the required timeframe.
- Georgia election officials use best practices for quality-control reviews, including duplicate-record checks, transaction reviews, and address validation.
- Secretary Raffensperger continues to prioritize accurate voter rolls, spearheaded by the 2023 implementation of the Georgia Registered Voter & Information Systems, or GARViS. GARVIS maintains Georgia’s official voter list and connects state and county election officials with external data sources, including DDS, while providing near-real-time transmission of voter information.
- Secretary Raffensperger expanded citizenship-verification checks. Statewide citizenship audits from 2024 through April 2026 utilized juror affidavits, DDS records, and federal SAVE data. Auditors noted that, at the urging of Secretary Raffensperger in 2025, improvements to SAVE made the federal system a more effective tool for Georgia’s citizenship audits, enabling it to process large batches of records and use Social Security numbers as unique identifiers.
“Election integrity isn’t a slogan. It is the daily work of checking the voter rolls, verifying eligibility, sharing information with our counties and continually improving our systems,” Raffensperger said. “Georgia has done that work. The numbers speak for themselves: 99.9% accuracy. Strong safeguards. Regular list maintenance. Compliance with the law and national best practices. That’s why Georgians can have confidence when they cast their ballot.”
Building on this audit, the Secretary of State’s Office recently completed its own citizenship audit of the voter rolls. Taking advantage of the expanded use of the Department of Homeland Security’s SAVE database, the Secretary of State’s Office identified 432 potential noncitizens who have voted at some point since 1996, including records identified by DOAA. Of those, 204 had already been moved to “Pending Citizenship” as a result of earlier Secretary of State’s Office citizenship audits of the voter rolls. The remaining 228 records were identified through a combination of DOAA’s work and expanded use of the USCIS SAVE database.
Registration dates for these records go back to 1948, before Georgia required proof of citizenship to register to vote, and some records have not voted since the 1990s.
