Forsyth County election board rejects challenge claiming four voters were dead

The challenge drew on ELLY, a voter-data tool that voting groups call error-prone

The Forsyth County, Georgia, election board took up an unusual proposition at a meeting this week: documents circulated late last week by one of its own members, Max Clavijo, that questioned whether the names of more than 22,000 people on the county’s voter roll were correct and disputed the eligibility of 69 voters. Among Clavijo’s claims was that four of those voters were dead.

All four are alive, ProPublica determined, and the board rejected the attempt to challenge their ballots.

The episode illustrates how, after Democrats swept Georgia’s statewide offices in this month’s midterm elections, people who maintain the 2020 election was stolen have continued to search for ways to contest Republican losses, ProPublica reported. It also drew attention to ELLY, a voter-data tool that Georgia State Election Board members and top staffers have urged counties to use to search their voter rolls for signs of fraud.

Clavijo is a member of the Election Integrity Network, a group led by conservative lawyer Cleta Mitchell that works to restrict voting and tighten election laws and rules, according to ProPublica. Mitchell worked closely with Donald Trump in his attempt to overturn his defeat in the 2020 election and, since Trump retook the presidency, has been central to his push to assert greater federal control over voting.

In the run-up to the midterms, on right-wing media and on private organizing calls, Election Integrity Network participants outlined plans to search voter rolls with ELLY’s Election Monitor and contest ballots the tool deemed suspicious, ProPublica reported. The tool was developed by network member Rick Richards and aggregates public data from state voter files, federal change-of-address records, tax documents, obituaries, property websites like Zillow and other sources.

Richards discussed ELLY’s national potential on a podcast in late September, on which one commentator said, “We can prove the fraud that’s gone on in every state,” adding, “This data will be able to set up challenges to those who lose.” The next month, on a private call with network members and other conservative activists, Richards promised to provide data from more than 3,000 counties to “citizen monitors” and GOP candidates to try to prove fraud, according to a recording reviewed by ProPublica.

Richards told ProPublica that he gave Clavijo the Forsyth County data at Clavijo’s request, and said in a subsequent email that their actions were meant to inform the board and remain confidential. Clavijo did not respond to questions from ProPublica. Richards refused to answer questions about whether Clavijo’s effort was part of a wider network campaign to contest votes cast in the midterms. “That’s irrelevant,” he said. “The data is the data. People can use it for what they want to.” Mitchell did not respond to questions about the group’s plans related to ELLY, in Georgia or nationally.

According to several people familiar with the matter, Clavijo’s documents alleged, beyond the four deaths, that other voters had moved out of the county or state, had voter ID irregularities or had registered under fictitious names, giving an initial as their first name.

At the meeting, Clavijo said he was not trying to disrupt the election’s certification or formally challenge voters — a process outlined in statute that can lead to ballots being tossed or voters removed from the rolls — but was seeking “to clean the voter rolls” and inform the board so officials could investigate further. Richards also said no ballots had been formally challenged. Barbara Luth, the board chair, said she felt “sorry for” Clavijo because activists were bypassing the challenge procedure “by coming to you and having you submit it.”

Pressed by fellow board members, Clavijo acknowledged he could not vouch for the data’s accuracy. “I did not make any explicit accusation that the information was 100% correct,” he said. The cover letter submitted with the documents said the challenges had not been verified with any “human review,” according to sources familiar with the matter.

Richards and Clavijo submitted obituaries for the voters they claimed were dead, but the records did not match the voters’ files. Every obituary said or suggested the deceased lived outside Forsyth County, which would have made voting there impossible, and one said the person lived in Arizona.

ProPublica reached all four voters. Alexis Ramirez, a night-shift nurse, said she cast her ballot during early voting and was surprised to hear it had been contested. “It’s kind of crazy that they attempted to do that without trying to prove it first,” she said. Saramma George said she was “really angry” to have the validity of her ballot questioned. In a third case, a voter’s son told ProPublica his mother was alive and declined to speak for her, saying her “ballot is valid.” The fourth voter, Chris Strickland, said, “I don’t know where they’re getting their information from, but it’s false. I’m alive. I’m here.”

Most of the eligibility disputes — 38 of the 69, according to people familiar with the matter — involved voters who registered using an initial. Alexander Knight said he goes by his middle name and that the information in his voter record mirrors how Department of Driver Services officials suggested he be identified on his driver’s license. “I am real,” he said. Four other challenged voters said they, too, abbreviated their first names. A. Joseph Guntherberg confirmed he routinely uses the same formulation of his name, adding that blocking his ballot would not have helped the challengers: “My candidate didn’t win.”

The tool’s accuracy has been much debated in the months since some Georgia State Election Board members began promoting its use. ELLY does not have access to personal identifiers such as voters’ Social Security or driver’s license numbers or full dates of birth, which increases the potential for mismatches involving people with the same names. Voting rights groups have called ELLY error-prone, and the Cherokee County election director complained to the state board after the tool falsely flagged a county board member’s spouse as dead.

State Election Board members and Richards have defended the tool. Accusations that its data is unreliable were “horse hockey,” Richards told ProPublica, explaining the phrase was “a Southern colloquialism for B.S.” He said it was up to county election workers to check ELLY’s data, and that he merely gathers it to facilitate efforts to maintain accurate voter lists. Joel Natt, a Republican member of the Forsyth County board, said the responsibility lay with challengers to justify their accusations. “This has no relevance to anybody here until” they provide solid evidence, he said, “through the proper channel.”