Civil rights groups file suit to extend return deadline for 3,000 Cobb voters whose absentee ballots were delayed
Civil rights groups file suit to extend return deadline for 3,000 Cobb voters whose absentee ballots were delayed
The suit was announced by the ACLU, Southern Poverty Law Center, and ACLU of Georgia on Friday.
COBB COUNTY, Ga. — Civil rights groups including the ACLU on Friday announced a lawsuit to extend the return deadline for 3,000 voters in Cobb County whose absentee ballots were delayed.
“With Election Day approaching, these voters are still without their absentee ballots. Without immediate action, these voters may be denied their constitutional right to vote,” a release from the groups said.
The county announced on Thursday that it was express shipping the ballots, after they described their processes being overwhelmed by a late surge in requests as the Oct. 25 deadline approached.
“We are taking every possible step to get these ballots to the voters who requested them,” Cobb Board of Elections Chairwoman Tori Silas said in a statement. “Unfortunately, we were unprepared for the surge in requests and lacked the necessary equipment to process the ballots quickly.”
What the ACLU and groups including the organization’s Georgia branch and Southern Poverty Law Center now want is for the return deadline to be extended to Nov. 8 for those voters. That, a release said, would align it with the deadline for provisional ballots to be cured (“curing” is the process of fixing a mistake of some kind that may have been involved in the provisional ballot being issued in the first place).
“More than 3,000 Cobb county voters have fulfilled their responsibility by requesting absentee ballots on time,” Poy Winichakul, senior staff attorney, SPLC, said in a statement. “We urge Cobb Elections to take immediate action to resolve this issue, ensuring all voters receive their absentee ballots promptly so they can make their voices heard in this critical election.”
More than a third of the 3,000 ballots were being sent out of state, Cobb County said Thursday. That leaves a narrow, unlikely-to-be-met window to return ballots via mail and have them arrive by the deadline the county needs to receive them by, which is the time polls close on Election Day.
The lawsuit also wants any outstanding ballots to be overnight delivered.
“Other than the release we sent yesterday, we don’t have anything further since we are entering litigation,” an email from a county spokesperson asking for comment on the lawsuit said.
Cobb County’s release on Thursday noted voters who requested absentee locally can still cancel their absentee request and vote in person. If they get their ballot by Election Day, they can also submit at a drop box or the county elections headquarters — which is located at 995 Roswell Street in Marietta and staying open 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Saturday, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Sunday and 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Monday.
Anyone with questions is directed to call the Cobb Elections Department at 770-528-2581.
The county release said the Cobb elections office had “contracted with a state-approved vendor to print and ship absentee ballots” but, Elections Director Tate Fall said, after that vendor’s final run on Oct. 25 “we needed to utilize our in-house equipment for the final shipment of ballots, but the equipment was not working properly.”
“By the time we got the equipment online, the deadline for mailing the ballots had passed, prompting us to work with the US Postal Service and UPS to take extraordinary measures,” Fall added. “Our team has been working around the clock to get the ballots out.”
ACLU officials in part blamed the Cobb County issue on Georgia’s SB 202, the voting law enacted following the 2020 election. The bill put in place a smaller window for requesting and issuing absentee ballots, after outcry among conservatives in Georgia over the widespread use of mail-in ballots during the COVID-19 pandemic that year and former President Donald Trump’s narrow loss in Georgia.
“There is a direct link between Georgia’s restrictive voting laws, flurry of last minute rules, and Cobb County’s failure to deliver ballots by the deadline,” said Theresa J. Lee, senior staff attorney, at the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project. “These voters followed the right steps to elect their leaders, yet stand on the brink of disenfranchisement due to bureaucratic errors that the increased burdens on voters and local officials have only worsened. The county must remedy this immediately and ensure these voters are not deprived of their fundamental right to vote.”
Georgia officials have consistently defended the law since its enactment more than three years ago, claiming it cleaned up certain election processes. They have pointed to Georgia’s record early voting numbers in their defense that the law did not and has not, as Democrats claimed, suppress voting. Democrats have countered that high voter enthusiasm and determination to overcome obstacles in the law are responsible for the turnout records.