Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office has opened a criminal investigation into Democratic state House candidate David Dillie after public records showed he may have cast ballots in both Georgia’s May 19 primary and Nevada’s June 9 primary this year, a potential felony that has become a flashpoint in the race for House District 161 against Republican incumbent Bill Hitchens.
Records Point to Ballots Cast in Two States
According to public records obtained by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Dillie voted by absentee ballot in Nevada’s Republican primary on June 9, 2026, roughly two and a half years after he says he moved back to Georgia. Those Nevada records surfaced alongside confirmation that Dillie also voted in Georgia’s May 19 primary earlier the same year, raising the question of how he could appear in voting records in two states within a matter of weeks.
Raffensperger Opens a Formal Inquiry
The Secretary of State’s office announced on September 24, 2026, that its Investigations Division would obtain and review voting records, signatures, and other evidence to determine what happened. Raffensperger called the allegation a very serious one and said his office would gather evidence and take appropriate legal action depending on what investigators find. The office has not set a timeline for completing its review.
Dillie Denies Knowingly Double Voting
Dillie has disputed the allegation, saying he did not fill out the Nevada ballot and does not know who did. He says he officially left Nevada in 2024 and attributes the apparent discrepancy to inexperience with how voter registration works across state lines, specifically, that he did not realize his old Nevada registration would not cancel automatically when he re-registered in Georgia, and that someone or something else caused a ballot to be cast in his name there in June.
Hitchens Calls It ‘Voter Fraud and Criminal Behavior’
Hitchens, the Republican incumbent Dillie is challenging, has seized on the allegation, saying flatly, that’s voter fraud and criminal behavior. The accusation has injected a fraud narrative into what was already shaping up as a competitive suburban Atlanta race, as Democrats look to flip Republican-held state legislative seats in the Atlanta metro area this November. Voting-rights advocates caution against assuming the worst, noting that double-voting allegations in Georgia have often turned out smaller than first reported, a 2022 Atlanta Journal-Constitution analysis found considerably less actual double voting than Raffensperger’s office had alleged after a similar 2020 investigation into roughly 1,000 suspected cases.
Double Voting Is a Felony Under Georgia Law
Under Georgia law, voting more than once in the same election cycle is a felony that can carry a prison sentence and a fine. If the Secretary of State’s investigation substantiates the allegation against Dillie, the matter would typically be referred to prosecutors for a charging decision. No charges have been filed as of mid-October, and Raffensperger’s office has released no additional findings beyond its initial announcement that the inquiry was underway.
The case also lands amid a period of heightened federal attention on voter rolls nationally, with Homeland Security officials publicly touting a multistate push to flag suspected noncitizen and duplicate registrations this fall. That broader climate has made individual cases like Dillie’s more politically charged than a routine registration dispute might otherwise be, since both parties are watching closely for examples that support their competing narratives about the scale of voter-roll problems heading into November.
What’s Next
The investigation is likely to stretch into the final weeks of the campaign and potentially past Election Day on November 3, leaving the allegation hanging over the District 161 race without resolution before voters cast their ballots. If investigators substantiate the claim and prosecutors move to charge Dillie, it could upend his candidacy and hand Hitchens a significant opening; if the inquiry instead confirms Dillie’s account of a registration mix-up, it could become a cautionary tale about how easily unresolved out-of-state voter rolls can fuel fraud accusations against candidates themselves, not just ordinary voters, in an election cycle already defined by heightened scrutiny of the voter rolls nationwide. Election administrators in both states say the case also points to a quieter, more fixable problem: most states still have no automated way to cross-check voter rolls against one another in real time, leaving it to individual voters to remember to cancel an old registration whenever they move, a gap that can look identical to fraud even when the explanation turns out to be bureaucratic rather than criminal.
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