Ahead of runoff, 6th District now has 8,000 new voters

Heated June 6 runoff to fill empty seat of Tom Price.

Nearly 8,000 voters have now been added to voting rolls in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District ahead of the hotly contested June 20 runoff between Republican Karen Handel and Democrat Jon Ossoff.

The total includes two types of voter: the newly registered, plus so-called “transfer” applications — voters already registered in Georgia who moved into the district after March 20, when the registration period originally closed.

It comes after a federal judge in early May extended voter registration in the district focusing on the issues of the race and finance reports — go to myAJC. com/politics.

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As a result, according to the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office, 7,942 people as of Tuesday afternoon had newly registered or transferred into the 6th District following the reopening of voter registration.

The 6th District already boasts more than 521,000 registered voters.

The impact of several thousand more is unclear, but it has the potential to swing a race that polling suggests is separated by only a few percentage points and within the margin of error for either candidate.

Early voting ahead of the runoff began Tuesday and will run through June 16.