Unlikely government agency helps Georgians prepare to vote
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ATLANTA, GA (WGCL ) — Tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of Georgia voters risk problems with voting in the presidential election.
One main fault? Bad mailing addresses. Absentee ballot applications sent by Georgia’s Secretary of State in the spring piled up un-delivered in county election offices around Georgia. Gwinnett County alone saw around 20,000 letters returned.
Some of the bad addresses came via a contractor’s software that did not properly read apartment unit numbers. Some came from mixing up street and mailing addresses.
But Georgia’s fluid population is a big part of the problem. People move and don’t change their address with state agencies. Returned election material is a first step toward inactive status, which can lead to voter registration cancellations.
One easy fix? The on-line registration office of the Department of Driver Services. It’s Georgia law to keep your license up to date. If you change addresses, your voting registration is automatically updated unless you specifically opt out.
Shevondah Leslis says making it easy to update addresses is a customer service issue for the Office of Driver Services.
“It could be they need to change it for voting. Could be they need to change it for security reasons. We want to make it as easy for the customers as possible,” says Leslie.
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