The Georgia Supreme Court ruled on Monday that Democrat-run Cobb County cannot accept thousands of absentee ballots that arrive after the Election Day deadline.
Cobb County announced on Thursday that as of Oct. 30, “more than 3,000 absentee ballots requested by last Friday’s deadline had not been mailed.”
Cobb County Board of Elections Chairwoman Tori Silas said that the county was “taking every possible step to get these ballots to the voters who requested them” but that the county was “unprepared for the surge in requests and lacked the necessary equipment to process the ballots quickly.” While absentee ballot requests had “been averaging 440 per day … that number surged to 750 per day” during the final week to request an absentee ballot, the county said.
To remedy the issue, the county announced on Thursday that it would overnight the late ballots for a Friday morning (Nov. 1) delivery with “prepaid express return envelopes to ensure voters can return them by Tuesday’s deadline.”
But on Friday, the ACLU and the Southern Poverty Law Center filed a suit arguing that, despite the county taking steps to get the ballots delivered to voters by Friday, voters would be “disenfranchised.”
Cobb County Judge Robert Flournoy bought the bogus argument, ruling on Friday that the 3,000 or so voters who received a late mail-in ballot could return those ballots before 5 p.m. on Nov. 8 — three full days after Election Day — as long as the ballots were postmarked by 7 p.m. on
