UPDATE: Following lawsuit, Cobb to extend absentee deadline again for runoff
Dec. 3—MARIETTA — The Cobb County Board of Elections will extend the deadline for some voters to return their absentee ballots after it was hit with its second lawsuit in as many months over its issuance of those ballots.
Attorneys for the board and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) reached a tentative agreement to extend the return deadline to Dec. 9, three days past the Dec. 6 U.S. Senate runoff.
Ballots will have to be postmarked by election day to be accepted.
The new deadline coincides with the deadline for military and overseas ballots to be returned. Ordinarily, absentee ballots are due back by the close of polls (7 p.m.) on Election Day.
The agreement will apply to any voter whose absentee ballot application was received by the board on or before last Saturday, Nov. 26. It's not immediately clear, however, how many voters will be affected by the extension.
Filed late Thursday night, the lawsuit from the ACLU and Southern Poverty Law Center was on behalf of several Cobb voters. It had initially sought for the deadline to be extended for all Cobb absentee voters.
The suit came on the heels of the MDJ reporting that more than 3,400 ballots listed as issued on Nov. 23, the day before Thanksgiving, were not mailed until after the Thanksgiving holiday. Elections Director Janine Eveler said her office was closed on Thanksgiving and the day after, along with the following weekend, resulting in four days when no ballots were mailed.
The case was similar to one filed by the same groups last month after the elections office failed to mail out more than 1,000 absentee ballots.
Cobb resident Jen Goeppner told the MDJ her daughters had their ballots marked as issued on Nov. 21 and 22, but neither had received them as of Friday.
State law requires absentee ballots to be sent out within three days of receiving the application. In a hearing Friday afternoon, Daniel White, attorney for the Board of Elections, maintained the county had sent the ballots within the required timeframe and not violated the law.
"This is not like November when Cobb County was coming into court saying, 'Oops, we've made a mistake, and we've got to fix it.' This is ... just the operation of thousands of people requesting an absentee ballot, and having a very short turnaround window," White told Superior Court Judge Kellie Hill.
Joining White in opposition was Brent Herrin, an attorney representing the Georgia Republican Party, the National Republican Party, and the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
"All of the affidavits indicate that the ballots were mailed within ... three business days of receipt of the application. So I just don't know if there's any evidence, necessarily, to support relief," Herrin said.
The ACLU disagreed, but absent any precedent on how the three-day period is defined, the two parties agreed to the compromise for all voters whose applications were received by the 26th.
Asked by Hill why voters whose applications were received on the 27th and 28th weren't included (the 28th was the final day to request a ballot), White said the onus falls on the voters when they wait until the final days.
"That's the risk you take as a voter. In other words, that's not Cobb County or the mail necessarily disenfranchising you. You've waited and requested and hoped your ballot's going to get there," White said.
As part of the tentative agreement, the county will be required to advertise the deadline extension, and voters who don't receive their ballot in time can use a federal write-in absentee ballot.
Judge Hill was expected to sign off on the consent order by the end of Friday.