A Georgia County Extends Deadline for Over 1,036 Absentee Ballots Due to ‘Human Error’
How is this not suspicious, especially happening the day before Election Day?
How in the world are we the only country that cannot get results right away?
A Cobb County judge extended the deadline for 1,036 absentee ballots because Cobb Elections officials did not send them out to the recipients.
The ballots have to be postmarked by Election Day, which is tomorrow.
From The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (emphasis mine):
“We know it wasn’t the voters’ fault, we know it wasn’t the post office’s fault,” said Daniel White, the attorney for the elections office. “This was an administrative error.
“We want to give everyone as much time as possible.”
Of the 1,036 voters who requested absentee ballots and could have been affected by the error, some canceled their absentee ballots and voted in person, and 716 have not yet voted, White said at a press conference after the hearing.
White added that the county overnighted ballots to most of those 716 voters, and will send the last 276 Monday night.
Four out-of-state absentee voters and the Cobb County Democracy Center, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia, filed suit against Cobb elections department Sunday. The lawsuit asked the judge to extend the deadline to return ballots and ensure voters are contacted and sent an absentee ballot through overnighted mail.
Cobb elections officials agreed.
I wonder if those who canceled their absentee ballot and voted in person will still get the absentee ballot. How many of them will still vote if they get the ballot?
The new order does not include military and overseas voters.
Officials will certify the results on November 15.
The ACLU and the Southern Poverty Law Center filed a suit on behalf of the citizens who did not receive the absentee ballots:
The suit says the Cobb County Election Board had failed to send absentee ballots in a timely fashion to all voters whose applications for such ballots had been accepted.
“The Cobb Board failed to timely send absentee ballots, for instance, to approximately 1,036 voters whose absentee ballot applications had been marked as issued on October 13, 2022, and October 22, 2022,” the suit filed Sunday said.
“It is expected that ballots marked as issued on other dates were also not timely processed or mailed,” the suit said.
The suit said that without emergency action by a judge, “hundreds of Cobb County voters are on the brink of disenfranchisement.”
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger opened a probe into the failure of sending the absentee ballots.
Georgia is already steaming due to a Senate race that is almost tied and the face-off between Kemp and Abrams for governor…again.
RealClearPolitics forecasts a runoff between incumbent Democrat Sen. Raphael Warnock and GOP candidate Herschel Walker.
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Comments
It’s been so long since we abandoned the one-man, one-vote, one-day tradition that we don’t remember how to do it. Also, math is racist so we’re going to have to come up with elections that don’t involve counting.
Trial by combat is beginning to sound attractive.
As long as you have to bring your own weapon. (You can’t borrow one from a bodyguard, either.) I know which side will win most of those contests.
That’s an easy one: We’re not. Most countries do not have instant results, and don’t expect them. They have exit polling, as we do, but that’s notoriously unreliable, and of course doesn’t even attempt to poll absentee voters (in those countries where there are such things). Of course if an election is not close the result can be projected immediately, but when it is close it is typical to have to wait days or even weeks for a final result.
In countries with parliamentary government it sometimes happens that one district has to hold a second election, either because the result was challenged or because a candidate died, and if the government hinges on that one seat the whole country has to wait a month or longer for the special election that will decide who has a majority.
Then there are the cases where nobody gets a majority and there can be weeks or months of negotiations trying to put together a coalition that works. Witness what happened in Israel two years ago.
Because “most” countries are crooked and cooking the votes
Peole have to step up in mass and demand one day, one vote, results that evening
No, they must not. There is NO RIGHT to a result that evening. There has NEVER been such a thing. You are simply delusional.
Nonsense. Most of the States manage to turn in results within a few hours of the polls closing, this includes large and small States. If they have a piss-poor system it is because that’s is what they have chosen,.
No, they don’t. There is not one state that does so. It is normal for no winner to be declared in any district until all the votes are counted. The news industry makes predictions, and sometimes they’re right and sometimes they turn out to be wrong, but NONE of the results you get on election night have EVER been official.
Not only absentee ballots have to wait till after the election to be counted. So do affidavit ballots, which have to be gone through one by one and adjudicated, which takes time.
So any projected results you see on election night are only based on what has been reported so far. In most seats that’s enough to predict a winner. But there are ALWAYS, in EVERY election, seats where it’s too close and you have to wait for the final result. Show me one place where it has ever been otherwise.
NONE of the results you get on election night have EVER been official.
As pedantic as you usually are, Milhouse, I have to support you on this. The only official results have been when one candidate looked at the projections and conceded.
Which is why election integrity is so important. Sometimes they can use the time to pull off shenanigans. Sometimes they can pretend long enough the other guy concedes.
If the facts are as stated, and it seems they were proven in court, then what choice did the judge have but to let those voters go past the deadline? How can you deny them a meaningful opportunity to vote, when they did all the right things and it was the county that screwed up? What if it were Democrat officials who deliberately “forgot” to process Republican voters’ ballots? You’d be demanding that they be allowed to vote.
I partially agree with you.
But it also seems like it could suspiciously be a “test” of the new voting climate post election reform laws.
I’m not suspicious of the results being validated properly, especially since they already know who has voted in person and who hasn’t (which begs the question…why did they need absentees? this should be a necessity, not convenience, thing).
I am suspicious that this was just an honest mistake and not a set up to establish legal precedent for future malfeasance.
Agree this one isn’t on the potential voters. The fault lies with the County Elections Officials. Someone didn’t send out the ballots. Someone didn’t supervise to notice the problem or chose to ignore the problem. Someone didn’t supervise the supervisor. Someone either didn’t create a process that had built in ironclad process and double checks or those procedures were violated.
Not the fault of the potential voter. Now, the question becomes the immediate identification of the multiple people who either decided to do the wrong thing or who decided it didn’t matter. Then the immediate suspension of these personnel from all elections duties until the investigation is complete. The Sec of State can provide temporary help.
They try that crap all the time. Remember them trying not to count military ballots in Florida?
If you don’t get your absentee ballot, you go to the polls in person. Cast a provisional ballot, it’ll get added to the tally. I miss the part of the law that allows judges to insert their personal opinion. Its a legislative screw up, Needs a political, not judical, solution.
You apply for an absentee ballot because you can’t go in person. So if you didn’t get your ballot because the county screwed up, you cannot be deprived of your right to vote, and it is the judge’s job to order a remedy, if one is possible. That is in the law.
Yet it is not the Judge’s authority to alter election rules. Or have you forgotten the Constitution they they all swore an oath to?
He has not altered the rules. He has ordered a remedy for these voters who have been wronged. That is definitely within his authority. The county wronged them, so the county must make it right.
To the contrary, that’s VERY MUCH altering the rules and the judge has no authority to do that.,
You apply for an absentee ballot because you can’t go in person.
Sadly, Milhouse, that isn’t the case anymore. You apply because you don’t want to go in person, in many places. Heck, there are places that will send them out to every name on their voting list… just because. It’s an attempt to both enable all the very low-motivation and low-information voters and to allow things like ballot-harvesting and other means of fraud. It’s the same with “early voting” – enable fraud and enable those who simply won’t make an effort to vote on voting day.
I live in Georgia and this happened to me two years ago. I never received my absentee ballot, made it to the polls…voted provisionally. I still do not know for sure if my vote was counted however.
Oh boo-hoo they can’t vote by mail in time, but if they got up and went to a polling station TOMORROW it would all count and be fine.
Yes. What about the ones who can’t. They have the right to vote absentee. They sent in their applications on time and correctly. Now YOU demand that they be deprived of their vote just because the county screwed up. How is that right? The judge correctly ordered that since a remedy is possible it must be given to them.
Just remember that if these were known to be Republican voters, and you even suspected that the “mistake” was no mistake, YOU would be jumping up and down screaming and demanding exactly what the judge has done. You’re only complaining because that’s not how it was presented.
I still think the “mistake” was no mistake. They’re just testing to see how far they can bend things.
So what if it wasn’t a mistake? On the contrary, if it wasn’t a mistake that makes it all the more important that these voters, who were deliberately deprived of their votes, MUST be allowed to vote. NOT to do so would be fraud.
All the more reason to get rid of this early voting crap and the mail-in crap. If you truly must vote absentee then have a good reason and, more importantly, it’s YOUR responsibility to make sure it gets in on time. The rest of us should not have to have our elections compromised because idiots couldn’t vote like normal people.
The price of using an unreliable voting method (absentee), is that it will, on occasion, be unreliable.
If you requested an absentee ballot, but didn’t get one, it’s on you to follow up. A convenience is not a right.
This smells like Cobb County is trying to stuff ballot boxes again. Georgia should have taken over the county election board.
The law says you can get an absentee ballot. These people relied on that law. The county didn’t send them their ballots. Thus they are entitled to a remedy.
The judge’s order is no different from when a polling place has a line spilling out the door at closing time, so a judge orders that it remain open until the line has cleared. That’s normal and routine; do you have a problem with it? (Bear in mind that as far as I know the rule everywhere is that if you’re inside the door at closing time you get to vote. The polls do not close until everyone who is waiting has voted. A court order is only needed by the ones who were still outside the door. Now tell me why those people should be treated differently than the ones who were inside the door. Why should a court not order them to be allowed in.
When a polling place closes, yes, the people in line get to vote. BUT, only the people who were in line before it closed, because they were there before it closed. Nobody else gets to get into line after that. That’s how it has always worked in places where they have honest elections.
it’s on you to follow up
And that’s exactly what they did. And it took judicial intervention to remedy the situation.
I’d like to see the party breakdown of said registered voters.
This is 100% aiding and abetting election fraud.
I’d like to see that too, but it’s only relevant when disciplining those responsible. It’s got nothing to do with the voters. They need to be allowed to vote.
And no, it is absolutely NOT abetting fraudulent votes; on the contrary, if it’s anything it’s an attempt to suppress valid votes. If it turns out that these were all Republicans, then that’s what it was.
Something is rotten in the state of Georgia
Yes. She’s running for governor.
I would like to claim I’m surprised but in reality I’m not. Just look at the quality and competency of the people working in government agencies these days. They tend not to attract the best of the best.
or they could just show up in person and vote.
Or. maybe they can’t. Maybe their job requires them to be out of state. Maybe they are bed-ridden.
(The follow-on comment would be joking, “Maybe they’re dead.”)
Here’s my concern with this: what will happen to those officials responsible for screwing up the absentee ballots? Will they, at a minimum, be fired? Will they be fined? Will they be drug from the registrar’s office by a pitchfork-wielding mob and tarred and feathered?
Unfortunately, I doubt it. It’s just an “Oops” after all, they didn’t mean anything by it. Despite, of course, it almost depriving some of their employers the right to vote.
This sort of thing should require termination and a fine (per ballot).
Through human(-ish) error, I just mistakenly submitted 1036+1 ballots to Cobb county in GA. As we’d hate to reject “legitimate” votes, n disenfranchise me, these need to count.
Problem solved. Next.
In Bama Absentee ballots are still done the old fashioned way. Gotta be absent from the State on election day or vote in person.
You have to mail in the ballot or return it in person. No one else can present your ballot. No one can mail your ballot back with their ballot. Must be separate.
The only exception that allows another person to hand in another’s ballot is for a medical emergency within five days of the election. Get a Physician to describe the issue, make a declaration that the issue is an an actual emergency preventing you from voting on election day but importantly hasn’t rendered you unable to complete the ballot. Then you have to appoint a particular person to deliver the ballot. Then it must be delivered by noon on election day.