Democratic Party of Georgia and Abrams for Governor File Lawsuit To Protect The Rights Of Absentee and Provisional Ballot Voters

Democrats Continue To Fight To Count The Vote Of Every Eligible Georgian

Suits Seek Relief For Voters Who Cast Absentee, Provisional Ballots In Good Faith

ATLANTA — Today, the Democratic Party of Georgia and Abrams for Governor filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging the arbitrary, unlawful rejection of thousands of absentee ballots and seeking relief for voters whose votes were wrongfully rejected despite good faith efforts on the part of the voters to properly cast their ballots.

The complaint seeks relief for voters casting:

1. Absentee mail-in ballots. The Democratic Party of Georgia and Stacey Abrams for Governor is suing the Secretary of State and the Board of Registration and Elections for Gwinnett County, while asking for relief for voters in all 159 counties. Gwinnett County has been rejecting absentee mail in ballots for spurious reasons. Federal and state law both require counties to accept absentee mail in ballots even if all of the oath information is imperfect or missing, so long as elections officials can identify the voter. Case law that shows that these ballots should be accepted, for example, if a voter inadvertently writes the current year instead of that voter’s birth year. We are asking for a court order that these votes be counted.

2. Provisional ballots. The Democratic Party of Georgia and Stacey Abrams for Governor is suing the Secretary of State and the Board of Registration and Elections for DeKalb County, while asking for relief for voters in all 159 counties. The 2018 General Election saw a historic number of provisional ballots cast in Georgia, leading to significant problems and irregularities both on Election Day and during the three-day period after Election Day during which voters can fix problems with provisional ballots. For example, one voter moved from Cobb County to DeKalb County and changed her registration address prior to the registration deadline, but her registration address was not updated. She showed up to her polling place in DeKalb County, where she was wrongfully not on the rolls, and she was offered a provisional ballot. Even though she then appeared in DeKalb County to prove her registration was changed before the deadline, DeKalb did not even review the documents she provided to cure her provisional ballot. This suit seeks to count the votes of voters who, in good faith, fill out a provisional ballot in one county but are registered in another county, and to extend the time that voters have to cure any problems.

A copy of the lawsuit can be viewed here.

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