WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A county within the U.S. state of Georgia violated the regulation by failing to promptly ship out some 3,000 mail-in ballots for Tuesday’s election that have been requested by the deadline, a bunch of civil rights teams mentioned in a lawsuit filed on Friday.
Below Georgia state regulation, eligible voters might request an absentee poll as much as 11 days earlier than any election. Of their lawsuit, the rights teams requested a choose to increase the return deadline on the ballots in Georgia’s Cobb County by three days to Nov. 8.
County authorities declined a request for touch upon the lawsuit. On Thursday, the county’s election board mentioned that, as of Wednesday, the ballots had nonetheless not been mailed out. It mentioned it was working with postal and supply corporations to expedite them and guarantee their well timed return.
“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,” the American Civil Liberties Union mentioned in an announcement.
The ACLU was joined in submitting the lawsuit by its Georgia state chapter and by the Southern Poverty Legislation Middle.
Georgia is considered one of seven battleground states within the Nov. 5 election, which opinion polls present to be a decent race between Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican former President Donald Trump.
Cobb County is a big and racially numerous space in Atlanta’s northern suburbs, and a spot the place Democrats might choose up votes they should win the state.
Over 3.8 million folks have already forged their ballots in Georgia in early voting, accounting for greater than half the state’s lively voters, in response to information from the Georgia secretary of state’s web site. The tally contains greater than 230,000 absentee voters.
In an announcement on Thursday, Cobb County mentioned that absentee poll requests had surged to a median of 750 per day within the final week, with 985 requests submitted on the Oct. 25 deadline.
“Unfortunately, we were unprepared for the surge in requests and lacked the necessary equipment to process the ballots quickly,” Cobb County Board of Elections Chairwoman Tori Silas mentioned on Thursday.
