At the Georgia State House in Atlanta Wednesday, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger gave an update to the press about record turnout in the state for the 2024 presidential election.
Raffensperger told reporters that almost 2 million Georgians have already cast their ballots. About 8 million people are registered to vote in the state.
Raffensperger also gave an update about election security, saying that his office recently conducted an audit and found 20 non-citizens on the voter rolls. They have since been removed and referred to law enforcement for next steps. He also said that 150 more people will be investigated to figure out whether they are citizens or not.
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Election officials don't believe the incidents will affect the voting process in the state.
"There is no proof that there is an overwhelming number of non-citizens on the rolls because the reality is if you're a non-citizen and you're a legal resident a you're on the path to citizenship, if you try to register to vote, you will never get to be a citizen," Gabe Sterling, Chief Operating Officer for the Office of Georgia's Secretary of State, told Scripps New. "It's a very high risk, very low reward for one vote thing."
Sterling was also emphatic in knocking down misinformation that he said is being spread by certain members of Congress, who are saying that voting machines in Georgia are flipping votes. Sterling says there is absolutely zero evidence of votes being changed.
State sustains cyberattack
The Georgia Secretary of State's office fended off a cybersecurity attack on the website that Georgia voters use to request absentee ballots, according to one official in the office and another source familiar with the matter.
The attack was described as “likely” originating from a foreign country, according to one of the sources. It was a DDoS attempt, or distributed denial of service, which tries to disrupt normal traffic to a webpage.
The official website was protected with the help of the technology company Cloudflare, and there was no disruption to voter services.
One official in the office told Scripps News, “Our systems worked.”
Sterling, the chief operating officer in the Secretary of State’s office, told Scripps News that they have not experienced something like this before “at that level. We’ve seen some probing, but not a full on DDoS attack.”
Sterling also told Scripps News that the attempt was detected on October 14.
