midterm
The ACLU of Georgia filed a lawsuit against the Cobb County Board of Elections after officials investigated and discovered that more than 1,000 requested absentee ballots were never mailed.
According to the complaint, filed Sunday in Cobb County Superior Court, 1,036 people who requested absentee ballots on October 13 or October 22 never got their ballots. The lawsuit claims that many of these people contacted that county elections office and were told that the ballots had likely already been sent and that they should wait.
Since the error was not discovered until days before Election Day, the complaint is asking the court to order the county board to send replacement ballots via overnight mail to those who have not received them yet, to extend the ballot receipt deadline for these particular ballots to the November 14 deadline for Uniformed and Overseas Voters, and to allow any of these voters who do not receive ballots by noon tomorrow to use the Federal Write-In Absentee Ballot.
"Absent relief, these voters will likely not be able to participate in the November 8, 2022, general election despite properly registering to vote, requesting their absentee ballot by the absentee ballot request deadline, and often contacting the Cobb Board multiple times on their own to find out about the status of their absentee ballot request," the complaint says.
HUMAN ERROR RESULTS IN MORE THAN 1,000 UNSENT ABSENTEE BALLOTS IN METRO ATLANTA AHEAD OF MIDTERMS
Cobb County officials said and investigation revealed more than 1,000 absentee ballots were never mailed to voters. (Cobb County)
Elections and Registrations Director Janine Eveler attributed the situation to human error, with new staff not following procedures to ensure ballots were mailed. In total, the county had received applications for roughly 30,000 absentee ballots, according to the complaint.
In a statement, ACLU of Georgia’s senior voting rights attorney Rahul Garabadu blamed Georgia's new voting law for the problem, despite not mentioning it at all in the lawsuit.
"There is a direct correlation between the state’s sweeping anti-voter law, S.B. 202, and Cobb County’s failure to get over a thousand registered voters their absentee ballots," Garabadu said. "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."
Fox News reached out to the Cobb County Board of Elections and Registration and the ACLU of Georgia for comment, but neither immediately responded.
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Garabadu's claim echoes those of Democrats like Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams and President Biden that Georgia's voting law is unjust and suppresses votes. Early voting data, however, showed that Georgia set a new record for most ballots cast by its citizens before Election Day in a midterm election, according to state election officials.
The early voting period in Georgia began October 17 and ended November 4. More than 2.5 million people have voted so far, between in-person early voting and absentee ballots, nearly reaching the 2.6 million in the 2020 presidential election.
Fox News' Sarah Rumpf contributed to this report.
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