Voter advocacy groups in Georgia filed a lawsuit on Wednesday asking a federal court to compel the state to restore nearly 200,000 names to its voter registration list ahead of the January runoff races for the state’s two Senate seats that will determine the balance of power in Washington.

In the suit, filed in the northern district of Georgia, three voter advocacy groups said the state had improperly removed 198,000 people from its voter registration lists in 2019 on the grounds that they had changed their addresses.

The Georgia chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union released a report in September based on an investigation by a progressive independent journalist, Greg Palast, who found that most of the approximately 300,000 people removed had not changed their addresses. Since the investigation was completed, several thousand voters have died or moved, but more than 195,000 remained wrongly affected, the suit says.

The Georgia A.C.L.U. said in a statement that those removed from the rolls were likely to be “young voters, voters of lower income, and citizens of racial groups that have been denied their sacred right to vote in the past.”