Georgia voter registration group surprised by investigation announcement

ATLANTA - The founder of a voter registration group recently revealed to be under investigation by the Georgia Secretary of State's Office said the announcement was unexpected, but that they have nothing to hide.

"Of course it was a surprise, but I knew that was I was doing was to the letter of the law," said Paul Heller, founder of Operation New Voter Registration GA. "Being surprised, but being responsible, I just found a top election law attorney in Georgia and confirmed what we were doing was to the letter of the law."

Heller said he started the non-partisan, all-volunteer group in early November to help register college and high school students, a voting block that is traditionally underrepresented.

"The whole purpose for that was to encourage and expand the voter base in Georgia," Heller explained.

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Just weeks after the group started their work, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger revealed in a news conference that his office had opened an investigation into Operation New Voter Registration Georgia for allegedly advising college students they could register to vote in Georgia and then change their registration later.

"Voting in Georgia when you are not a resident of Georgia is a felony and encouraging college kids to commit felonies with no regard for what it might mean for them is despicable," Sec. Raffensperger said November 30.

But Heller said a Georgia law passed in 1990 allows college students the flexibility to choose where they register to vote.

"We just simply asked students whether they were registered to vote for the upcoming election and if they said no, then we told them that they had this opportunity to vote either in their home state or in Georgia where they were attending college," said Heller.

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Since the news conference, Heller said he has not heard from any investigators.

"To date, I haven't been contacted by any authorities whether it be the Secretary of State or anyone else, but I've got nothing to hide," Heller said. "I would welcome that opportunity to discuss what we've done and share any documents that we've generated for the general public or that we've used internally to train because we are very serious about training our people before they go out."

Heller said ONVR has grown to about 75 volunteers and he plans to keep the organization going into the future. So far, they have focused their efforts on registering people on college campuses and outside big box stores as well as providing voter registration information to high school principals.

"The word of mouth takes over. When people are involved in your organization and they feel like they're making a difference, I mean, to see people come back and say, 'Hey, I physically on my phone helped people register--10 people today.' It's so gratifying," said Heller.

He said he hopes to work with the Secretary of State's Office to streamline the online voter registration process.

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