Georgia voter roll audit finds only 20 noncitizens out of 8 million registered voters

A comprehensive audit of Georgia's voter rolls found that just 20 noncitizens were registered to vote on a registration list of over 8 million, according to an announcement Wednesday from Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.

All 20 of those registrations have been canceled and referred to the authorities for investigation and potential prosecution, Raffensperger said.

An additional 156 registrations were flagged for a "human investigation" that is now underway.

"Georgia has the cleanest voter list in the entire country," Raffensperger, a Republican, said of the audit. "Georgia can trust in their elections."

The result of the audit stands in stark contrast to claims being pushed by some Republicans, including former President Donald Trump, that large numbers of noncitizens are going to vote in the 2024 election.

"Our elections are bad," Trump said at last month's ABC News presidential debate as part of his criticism of Democrats. "And a lot of these illegal immigrants coming in, they're trying to get them to vote. They can't even speak English, they don't know even know what country they're in practically, and these people are trying to get them to vote, and that's why they're allowing them to come into our country."

Gabriel Sterling, the COO for the Georgia secretary of state's office, pushed back on people promoting those claims.

"One of the reasons the secretary ordered this noncitizenship audit is to prove to people that -- while there are ways that some can potentially get on -- it is increasingly rare," Sterling said Wednesday. "There is no proof that there is this overwhelming number of noncitizens on the rolls."

The 20 noncitizens found on the voter rolls were located across seven different counties, Sterling said. They were found in part because they had signed affidavits attesting that they were not citizens in order to get out of jury duty.

Sterling said the 20 have been referred to local prosecutors, and that there are some instances "where they probably should be prosecuted, but that's not our call."

Sterling also forcefully pushed back on anyone claiming that voting machines are generating fraud in the election, saying there is "zero evidence of a machine flipping an individual's vote."

Sterling said they have seen situations where there are "elderly people whose hands shake and they probably hit the wrong button slightly, and they didn't review their ballot properly before they printed it."

He directly called out anyone suggesting otherwise, saying, "There is literally zero -- and I'm saying this to certain congresspeople in the state -- zero evidence of machines flipping votes. And that claim was a lie to 2020 election and it's a lie now."