VALDOSTA — Voter fraud charges against a group of Brooks County citizens known as the Quitman 11 have been dropped.

The Quitman 11 is a group of citizens and elected officials who were charged with multiple counts of unlawful possession of ballots in connection with the July 2010 Brooks County school board primary election. Originally, these suspects were called the Quitman 10, then two more people were charged prompting the title Quitman 10+2. One suspect has since passed away.

Lalaine Briones, director of legal services for the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia, said all charges against the group have been dropped.

Briones said a lack of evidence in several of the cases influenced the decision not to move forward with prosecution. Briones also said several witnesses recanted their statements during the trial of Lula Smart, one of the Quitman 11, which led prosecutors to believe further attempts to prosecute would be unsuccessful. Smart was acquitted during a trial in September.

In a released statement, Georgia NAACP President Francys Johnson referred to the cases as a “witch hunt,” and stated that the dropped charges demonstrate that “Davids can still of victories over Goliath.”

“This is a total victory against the forces of retrogression that tried to intimidate and suppress democracy in South Georgia,” said Johnson.

    In the released statement, the Georgia NAACP accused Secretary of State Brian Kemp of not processing more than 51,000 voter registration applications and targeting minorities, women, the elderly and young voters with voter suppression tactics.

The Quitman 11 case attracted statewide and national attention from civil rights groups since the suspects, who are African-American, defeated white opponents and placed black school board members into the majority for the first time.