Georgia voters on Nov. 6 sued officials over absentee ballots that a county acknowledged were never sent.
Madison Cook, Tessa Parker, Margaret Wolfe, and Linda Walton sued the Cobb County Board of Elections & Registration, Cobb County officials, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, and members of the Georgia State Election Board. The case was filed in Cobb County Superior Court.
The voters want the court to require election officials to send the unsent absentee ballots via overnight mail, to extend the receipt deadline for absentee ballots from affected voters, and to let the affected voters use federal write-in absentee ballots at the polls on Election Day.
The Cobb County Board of Elections and a spokesperson for Raffensperger didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
Cobb County officials said on Nov. 5 that an investigation revealed more than 1,000 absentee ballots were never sent out.
“I am sorry that this office let these voters down,” Elections and Registrations Director Janine Eveler said in a message to the board. “Many of the absentee staff have been averaging 80 or more hours per week, and they are exhausted. Still, that is no excuse for such a critical error.”
The situation was attributed to human error.
The office said it was sending unsent ballots overnight to voters with out-of-state addresses and that some of the remaining voters canceled their ballot requests. The remaining voters were urged to vote in person on Nov. 8.
Attorneys with the American Civil Liberties Union and the Southern Poverty Law Center, who are representing the plaintiffs, said further action was necessary.
To ensure the affected voters can vote, the deadline for receiving the absentee ballots should be moved to Nov. 14, the lawyers said. And all voters who didn’t receive ballots should be allowed to use a federal write-in absentee ballot, typically used for members of the military and relatives of those members, the suit says.
“Hundreds of eligible Cobb County voters did everything right and yet find themselves on the brink of total disenfranchisement because they were never mailed their absentee ballots, as is required under Georgia law. Even Cobb County has acknowledged they made a ‘critical error’ and ‘let these voters down,'” Jonathan Topaz, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Voting Rights Project, said in a statement.
“Only this court can right the wrong done to these hundreds of voters and ensure that they are able to exercise their fundamental right to vote in this November election.”
