WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A county in the U.S. state of Georgia violated the law by failing to promptly send out some 3,000 mail-in ballots for Tuesday’s election that were requested by the deadline, a group of civil rights groups said in a lawsuit filed on Friday.
Under Georgia state law, eligible voters may request an absentee ballot up to 11 days before any election. In their lawsuit, the rights groups asked a judge to extend the return deadline on the ballots in Georgia’s Cobb County by three days to Nov. 8.
County authorities declined a request for comment on the lawsuit. On Thursday, the county’s election board said that, as of Wednesday, the ballots had still not been mailed out. It said it was working with postal and delivery companies to expedite them and ensure their timely 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 said in a statement.
The ACLU was joined in filing the lawsuit by its Georgia state chapter and by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Georgia is one of seven battleground states in the Nov. 5 election, which opinion polls show to be a tight race between Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican former President Donald Trump.
Cobb County is a large and racially diverse area in Atlanta’s northern suburbs, and a place where Democrats could pick up votes they need to win the state.
Over 3.8 million people have already cast their ballots in Georgia in early voting, accounting for more than half the state’s active voters, according to data from the Georgia secretary of state’s website. The tally includes more than 230,000 absentee voters.
In a statement on Thursday, Cobb County said that absentee ballot requests had surged to an average of 750 per day in the last 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 said on Thursday.
(Reporting by Jasper Ward; editing by Rami Ayyub and Rosalba O’Brien)
