State attorney general seeks approval for voter checks in Georgia

The state attorney general's office is asking the U.S. Department of Justice for approval of its citizenship verification process for newly registered voters.

The state uses databases with social security numbers and driver's licenses.

But the Department of Justice last week warned Georgia that its checks may not be enforceable because it had not sought a clearance for it by the federal government.

The clearance process is designed to ensure the checks are not discriminatory.

A spokesman for the attorney general's office says the clearance was not initially sought because federal law requires the checks.

The Department of Justice has 60 days to review the case. That deadline comes more than a month after Election Day, although Georgia has requested an expedited review.

The federal government is questioning the checks after it determined that Georgia had requested two million in the last year. That number would represent more than a third of registered voters in the state.

But Secretary of State Karen Handel has said that number is misleading, and that it stems from multiple checks that resulted from a computer backlog with the federal government's social security identification system.