Georgia leaders accused of blocking voter rolls

The viral version of this story has the wrong villain. Georgia’s governor and secretary of state are not the ones blocking Fulton County from handing records to the Justice Department. Right now, Fulton County itself is in court trying to stop a federal subpoena that would force it to hand over personal details for people who worked the 2020 election. That fight sits inside a much bigger Trump-era DOJ push to get election records from states and local governments — and in Georgia, there are actually two separate cases that people keep mashing together. (abcnews.com) ### What actually happened this week? On May 5, Fulton County’s Board of Registration and Elections asked a federal court in Atlanta to quash a grand jury subpoena. The subpoena demands the names, home addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses of every staffer, poll worker, and volunteer involved in Fulton’s 2020 election. County lawyers argue the demand is overbroad and amounts to harassment, not a normal evidence request. (abcnews.com) ### So where did Kemp and Raffensperger come in? Mostly through confusion. Brian Kemp does not appear to be the actor in this subpoena fight. Brad Raffensperger is involved in a different dispute — one over Georgia’s statewide voter registration list. In that case, the DOJ sued Georgia in December 2025 seeking the full unredacted voter file, and Raffensperger resiste(abcnews.com)smissed that case on January 23, 2026, on venue grounds. (justice.gov) ### Are voter rolls the same thing here? No — and that’s the key mix-up. “Voter rolls” usually means the statewide voter registration list. The current Fulton County fight is about election workers’ personal information tied to the 2020 election. Those are different records, held by different officials, in different legal disputes. If someone says Georgia leaders are blocking Fulto(justice.gov) into one. (abcnews.com) ### Why is DOJ digging into Fulton at all? The department has been pressing hard on Georgia since late 2025. It sued Fulton County’s clerk over 2020 election records under the Civil Rights Act of 1960, which gives the attorney general power to demand certain election records for inspection. In January, the FBI also seized ballots and other materials from Fulton’s ele(abcnews.com)erials returned. (justice.gov) ### Why is Fulton fighting the subpoena? Because election workers in Fulton have already been through years of threats and conspiracy theories. County officials argue that giving the federal government a giant list of workers’ personal contact information could expose people to more harassment without producing evidence for a viable criminal case. Their filing also argues that any real prosecution tied to 2020 conduct would run into statute-of-limitations problems. (abcnews.com) ### Is this part of a broader national push? Yes. The DOJ has filed voter-data lawsuits against multiple states and has been trying to collect statewide registration lists and other election records around the country. Fulton County’s case is one local branch of that larger campaign. That broader backdrop is why these Georgia disputes keep getting blurred together online. (justice.gov) ### What’s the clean takeaway? The clean version is simple: Fulton County is blocking a DOJ subpoena for election-worker data, while Raffensperger separately fought — and for now beat back — a DOJ demand for Georgia’s statewide voter file. Those are both real fights. But the social post claiming Kemp and Raffensperger are stopping Fulton from handing over voter rolls in this current subpoena battle does not match the actual court record. (abcnews.com)