The DeKalb County Board of Registration and Elections voted down a proposal Oct. 9 to add two items to the agenda: a review of the process for removing convicted felons from the voter roll and a discussion of compliance with SB 189, a state law that took effect in January 2025 limiting the use of mail-service addresses for establishing residency.

The issue drew several public comments urging the board to act. Victor Tripp, identified in an emailed public comment as a DeKalb resident since 1978, told the board he was “dismayed” the items were not on the agenda and said recent cases showed a need to review procedures; he added that SB 189’s purpose is “to stop the use of false resident addresses.”

The motion to amend the published agenda was moved and seconded but failed on a voice vote; meeting participants and the chair discussed adding the matters to the next month’s agenda instead. The board subsequently approved the original agenda as published.

Speakers during public comment raised two related concerns: that mail-service addresses such as P.O. boxes or commercial renter-mailboxes can lead to incorrect ballots being issued, and that a failure of an elections system had left a convicted felon on the rolls for three years. Bill Henderson and other commenters said the secretary of state recently purged many invalid registrations but that some addresses tied to post office boxes or UPS store boxes remain on the rolls and should be reviewed.

Director Smith addressed related questions during the director’s report, saying the department has been processing registration work and manual cancellations and earlier in the meeting reported that “year to date, 1,151 of those were felons,” referring to manual voter-registration cancellations that identified felony convictions. Board member Floman clarified in board comments that counties do not independently remove felony convictions from voter rolls: “No county just removes felons from the list. That has to be initiated by whatever level of government convicted the person,” he said, describing the process by which the Secretary of State is notified before counties act.

Several speakers urged the board to place both items on a future agenda for fuller review; board members said the items could be added to next month’s meeting for staff and legal to prepare. No formal direction to staff to initiate an immediate, county-level review of felon-removal procedures or of SB 189 compliance was recorded during the Oct. 9 meeting.