Civil rights organizations sue over 1,000 unsent absentee ballots in Atlanta-area county

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) filed a lawsuit on Sunday urging an extension of the absentee ballot deadline for roughly 1,000 voters in an Atlanta-area county after local election officials failed to send them their requested ballots.

Cobb County election officials on Friday announced 1,046 requested absentee ballots were never mailed. They said the county overnighted ballots in the mail to those in the group with out-of-state addresses while instructing the hundreds of others they must vote in person on Tuesday. The newly sent ballots must be received by the time polls close to count.

“I am sorry that this office let these voters down,” Cobb County Elections and Registrations Director Janine Eveler said in a message to the county’s elections 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.”

Cobb County, the state’s third-largest county by population, is located outside of Atlanta and serves as a crucial area in the close race between Sen. Raphael Warnock (D) and Republican Herschel Walker, a key contest in determining which party takes control of the Senate, as well as Georgia's gubernatorial race.

The two civil rights organizations and the ACLU of Georgia, which filed the suit on behalf of multiple affected voters and a local voter registration organization, asked the Cobb County Superior Court to provide emergency relief by overnighting ballots to the remaining affected voters and extending the return deadline until Nov. 14, when ballots from overseas are due in the state.

“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,” Jonathan Topaz, an ACLU staff attorney, said in a statement. 

“Even Cobb County has acknowledged they made a ‘critical error’ and ‘let these voters down,’” Topaz added. “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.”

The suit also asks the court to allow the voters to use the Federal Write-in Absentee Ballot, which provides overseas voters a way to vote if their absentee ballot does not arrive in the mail on time.

The Hill has reached out to the Cobb County elections board and the Georgia secretary of state’s office, both of which were named as defendants, for comment.

A county election official and the groups that filed the suit tied the failure in part to a recent voting law passed in Georgia last year, which shortened the period in which voters can request a mail-in ballot by more than half and delayed when counties can begin mailing the ballots by roughly three weeks.

“I am very disappointed that we have placed these voters in a position where they may not have an opportunity to cast their ballots in this general election,” Cobb County Board of Elections Chair Tori Silas said in a statement. “While human error was clearly a factor, I believe reduced time frames for the receipt of requests for and processing of absentee ballot provided under SB202, as well as the turnover in the Elections office, are also significant factors.”

Rahul Garabadu, the ACLU of Georgia’s senior voting rights attorney, similarly said there is a “direct correlation” between the new law, S.B. 202, and the recent problem.

“The anti-voter law put tremendous pressure on elections officials to accomplish a number of responsibilities under a very tight deadline, and in Cobb County, that pressure has resulted in a huge error and hundreds of voters at risk of being disenfranchised,” Garabadu said in a statement. “We are suing to make sure all Cobb County voters are able to have their voices heard, and we look forward to the day when the state partners with counties to make voting easier, not harder, for all Georgians.”