Register to Vote

Register Online | Download Application

Before you can vote in an election in Habersham County Georgia you must register with Habersham County Office of Elections and Registration. You can now register to vote online if you have a Georgia-issued personal identification card or a Georgia-issued driver’s license.

Need a more mobile option? THERE’S AN APP FOR THAT! Download GA Votes from the Apple Store or the Droid Play Store onto your phone or tablet device. It allows for registration and updates or changes to name and/or address information. The site also provides information on polling locations, sample ballots, satellite voting locations and more!

To register to vote you must:

Be a citizen of the United States
Be a legal resident of the county
Be at least 17½ years of age (at least 18 to vote)
Not be serving a sentence for conviction of a felony involving moral turpitude (any base or vile conduct contrary to accepted morals, that accompanies a crime)
Have not been found mentally incompetent by a judge

The main location for voter registration in Habersham County is the Office of Elections and Registration, located at 403 Habersham County Shopping Center, Cornelia GA 30531.

When the Motor Voter Law went into effect, the Secretary of State set up six other alternative locations to register to vote:

Department of Public Safety (when renewing your driver's license)
Mail-in Applications (applications are available at almost all government offices)
Department of Human Resources (Health Department, rehabilitation facility, Department of Family and Children's Services)
State-funded offices for the physically disabled
Recruitment offices (Post Office)
Libraries (any local library)

Also, any resident 17½ years old or older may receive an application from an organization, political party or individual who has requested blank forms from our office or from the office of the Secretary of State. The organizations, political parties or individuals distributing these forms may not accept them back once they are filled out.

You may also download the Application for Voter Registration (104Kb) to the right.

What happens once the application is completed?

When you register to vote at any of the six locations listed above, you leave your application with that office, which mails it to the Secretary of State, who in turn mails it to our office. However, if the application was received from an organization, political party, or individual, the actual person filling out the form has to turn it in to the Registrar's office or mail it (postage is provided on the outside of the form).

Once received by our office, the application is checked to make sure that it contains all of the necessary information, such as social security number, date of birth, 911 address, etc.

If the information provided is complete and accurate, we determine the precinct in which the applicant lives and enter the data into the computer. The Secretary of State receives and processes the computerized information and sends us a registration card to mail to the voter.

If any of this information is missing, a letter is sent to the applicant, or we try to contact him/her by phone. If the missing information is not provided, the application is rejected and a letter explaining the rejection is mailed to the person. He/she then has another chance to provide the missing data.

What if a voter moves?

Any time a voter moves, whether within the county, out of county, or out of state, our office needs to be notified of the change of address so that the he/she may be placed in a new voter precinct or be deleted from our records, according to the situation.

In order to vote in the precinct where he/she lives, the voter must give us his/her address change at least 30 days before an election. Otherwise, he/she will have to vote in his/her old precinct and will need to inform the poll worker of his/her new address. The poll worker, in turn, will give the address change to our office.

With any change of address from one Habersham County location to another, our office notifies the voter of a precinct change by mailing a new registration card. If the voter has moved to another county in Georgia, we send him/her a letter and a new registration application to fill out and return to the Registrar's office in the county where he/she lives. A voter who moves out of state is also notified but is not sent a new application.

For more information on voting and voter registration, visit the Georgia Secretary of State's website.