ATLANTA _ A federal judge allowed Georgia election officials to cancel about 300,000 inactive voters as planned Monday night.
U.S. District Judge Steve Jones said Monday that he will further consider the issue Thursday, but in the meantime the voter registration cancellation can move forward.
Fair Fight Action, an organization suing the state over voting rights, had asked Jones to halt the removal of about 120,000 inactive voters from the state's rolls. The rest of the cancellations target people who have moved away.
A Georgia law, known as "use it or lose it," allows registrations to be canceled after voters fail to participate in elections for several years.
Jones said in court that voters could be reinstated if he later decides they shouldn't have been canceled.
The Georgia secretary of state's office intends to move forward with its cancellation process late Monday night.
By Tuesday morning, the number of registered voters in Georgia will have shrunk from about 7.4 million to 7.1 million.
"Georgians should not lose their right to vote simply because they have not expressed that right in recent elections," said Fair Fight Action CEO Lauren Groh-Wargo. "Georgia's practice of removing voters who have declined to participate in recent elections violates the United States Constitution."
The secretary of state's office declined to comment.
The issue before Jones is whether inactive voters can be removed from the rolls after seven years or nine years.
Georgia voters facing cancellation were declared "inactive" after three years in which they failed to participate in elections, contact election officials, respond to election officials' mail or update their registrations. Then their registrations could be voided after they missed the next two general elections.
A change in state law this year lengthens the period before voters become "inactive," from three years to five years.
Court filings from Fair Fight said election officials should have applied the new state law to the list of voters who had been previously declared inactive.
