Georgia County Says Thousands of Absentee Ballots Being Mailed Late

Georgia’s third-largest county said that thousands of absentee ballots are being mailed late before the November 5 election.
Election officials in Cobb County, which is north of Atlanta, were using U.S. Postal Service express mail and UPS overnight delivery to send over 3,000 absentee ballots to voters on time.
The late absentee ballots were being mailed with prepaid express return envelopes, which election workers said would ensure that the ballots could be returned on time.
Mail-in ballots must be returned by Election Day on Tuesday to be counted.
Cobb County election officials said voters affected by the late absentee ballots could still vote in person on the final day of early voting Friday or on Election Day on Tuesday.
The county’s election headquarters planned to stay open to accept hand-delivered absentee ballots on the weekend and on Monday. However, the Board of Elections said that over 1,000 late absentee ballots were being sent to people out of state.
Cobb County Board of Elections and Registration Chairwoman Tori Silas said Thursday, “We want to maintain voter trust by being transparent about the situation.”
“We are taking every possible step to get these ballots to the voters who requested them,” Silas added.
Silas said the delay in sending absentee ballots was caused by faulty equipment and a late influx in absentee ballot requests during the week before the October 25 deadline.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Southern Poverty Law Center filed a lawsuit Friday seeking to extend the deadline for counting absentee ballots postmarked by Election Day or three days later.
The suit was filed on behalf of three Cobb County voters who said their absentee ballots had still not been delivered as of Friday.
The suit said that while Cobb County election officials “have taken some steps to help alleviate the problem, those actions are not nearly enough to safeguard their right to vote.”
Georgia has seen a record-high number of ballots cast since early voting began on October 15. Over 3.6 million ballots have been cast as of Thursday, according to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office.
This number of early voters is over half of Georgia’s active voters and includes over 226,000 absentees.
Georgia is one of seven swing states that will determine the results of the presidential election in a close race between former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, and Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democrat nominee.
According to the polls, Trump leads Harris by 1.7 points in Georgia (48.7 to 47 percent) as of Friday, poll aggregator FiveThirtyEight says.
This article includes reporting from The Associated Press.