America at 250: Civic hygiene can save election integrity in Ga. and beyond

Many state, local and judicial officials did this in 2020; perhaps they will do so again.

In the meantime, though, there are things we as individuals can do to protect ourselves against the onslaught of disinformation coming our way.

Think of it as civic hygiene to immunize ourselves against being carried away on a wave of outrage.

Five ideas on distinguishing fact from fiction in elections

Credit: DENNIS MCDANIEL

Credit: DENNIS MCDANIEL

1. Have a sense of scale. Is 10,000 a big number? It sure seems so when you hear that’s how many voter registrations the Department of Homeland Security flagged for further investigation into the registrant’s citizenship status. But DHS reviewed 49.5 million voter registrations. That means those 10,000 flagged registrants, who may or may not end up being noncitizens, constitute just 0.02% of the registrations reviewed.

In Georgia, a 2024 comprehensive citizenship audit of the voter rolls found just 20 confirmed noncitizens out of 8.2 million registered voters, only nine of whom attempted to cast a ballot. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t find and remove noncitizens from the voter rolls, but it does put the scope of the problem in a different perspective.

2. Understand the difference between registration and voting. We hear a lot about ineligible voters found on state registration rolls, but a lot less about why that happens. Federal law requires states to regularly update their rolls, but it also prohibits them from throwing voters off the rolls too quickly.

This ensures that voters won’t suddenly find themselves ineligible just because they failed to vote in the last election. There will often be a lag between when a person loses ineligibility and when their name is taken off the rolls. A person who has died or moved out of state may temporarily remain on a state’s voter rolls, but that doesn’t mean anyone did anything wrong or that someone plans to cast a ballot in their name (much less that they would get away with it if they did).

Discrepancies between voter rolls and eligible voters are rarely evidence of fraud. Instead, they are the rather mundane result of the balance struck between maintaining clean rolls and protecting voters from being removed from the rolls in error or having to constantly renew their voter status.

3. Don’t mistake mistakes for crimes. More than 150 million votes are cast in presidential elections, and with that many ballots cast and counted across the country, there will be problems. Election workers are human, and they will make mistakes. Voters might be given the wrong ballots. Ballots are sometimes damaged and must be duplicated. There also, of course, may be individual wrongdoers.

No election procedures, no matter how robust, can completely prevent issues like this. The very fact that so many of these issues come to light precisely because of the numerous redundancies built into the system might be better thought of as proof that the system is working, rather than evidence it is failing.

4. Click your way through it. There is an enormous gap between claims made on social media and what people say in more formal spaces, where facts matter. In 2020, this gap was an abyss. Claims that election observers were barred from observing vote counters became a dispute about how close to the counting tables they could stand. Accusations that thousands of ballots were transported from New York to Pennsylvania fell apart when investigated. And, notoriously, the “suitcases” of ballots purportedly pulled from underneath a table at the Fulton County counting center turned out to be no such thing.

Posting rumors and accusations on social media is easy. Court documents, governmental reports and legislative investigations, in contrast, operate in environments where lying has consequences and exaggerations are exposed. These resources are harder to find and less fun to read, but essential to buffering ourselves against the latest online outrage.

5. Volunteer to be a poll worker. Our elections are transparent, but they are complicated. That can make it difficult for voters to understand how they work. Volunteering at the polls is a wonderful way to conquer that confusion.

Sometimes your side wins; other times, the opposition will

Politics can seem like a team sport, but elections are not a game.

Living in a diverse democracy in which people disagree deeply about important things requires a shared commitment to taking our elections seriously.

That requires all of us to accept that our side can lose a fair fight.

If instead you let yourself believe that the only honest elections are the ones your side wins, we risk losing one of America’s greatest successes: the lasting ability to peacefully transfer power through politics rather than violence.

Lori A. Ringhand is the author of the 2026 book, “We the Voters: The Constitutional Choices That Shape America’s Elections” (Stanford University Press) and is the Josiah Meigs University of Georgia Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Georgia Law School.

The AJC is inviting readers to answer this question: “What are your hopes, concerns and reflection on the United States turning 250 this July 4?” Email letters of 250 words or fewer with your name and city/town to david.plazas@ajc.com. Use the subject line “America at 250.”