Just under 4,500 Georgia voters acted to keep their voter registrations from being purged this week, a small percentage of more than 313,000 registrations set to be canceled for inactivity and failure to respond to election officials.
308,753 registrations were moved from “inactive” to “canceled” status Monday night as part of federally-required voter list maintenance, according to an updated list from the Georgia secretary of state’s office.
In late October, the state publicly released a list of 313,243 inactive voter registrations that belonged to people who either filed a national change of address form, had election mail returned as undeliverable or did not vote or make contact with elections officials for at least seven years.
Read more from GPB's Stephen Fowler.
Georgia is seeing outpatient visits for flu-like illness at a higher rate than the national average, according to health officials.
So far, two people in Georgia have died this flu season, and 204 have been hospitalized, according to the Georgia Department of Public Health's weekly influenza report.
Scott Pauley, a press officer at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said this year is unusual because a majority of flu activity is being caused by the influenza-B strain. The prevalence of that strain of flu is concerning, he said, because it’s seen less often.
“Flu is unpredictable,” Pauley said. “It’s surprising to see it in the current activity levels, but it has happened before in past seasons.”
Read more from GPB's Sarah Rose.
High school girls across Georgia will have the chance to participate in a newly-sanctioned sport next year.
Flag football is now a sport that high schools can choose to offer to its girl students, the Georgia High School Association announced Wednesday, making Georgia the fourth state in the country to officially sanction the sport.
