Questions are already being raised over the collection of absentee ballots in some Georgia counties from the weekend for the November 5 General Election, after early voting officially closed last Friday evening.
The Republican National Committee (RNC) filed a new lawsuit Sunday after a state judge one day prior rejected allegations that Fulton County was violating Georgia’s election law over its extension.
Articles found at website, The Hill reported Sunday that Republicans cite a provision that mandates drop boxes close when in-person early voting, known as advance voting in Georgia, concludes, which it did Friday.
The new case challenges both Fulton and six other counties that have similarly continued to accept hand-delivered absentee ballots through the weekend.
It was filed in federal court and claims the practice violates the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection and its delegation of elections authority to state legislatures.
On Saturday, a Georgia judge in Fulton County rejected a Republican lawsuit trying to block counties from opening election offices on Saturday and Sunday to let voters hand in their mail-in ballots in person. The lawsuit only named Fulton County, but WSB-TV in Atlanta reported over the weekend that the Trump campaign, the Republican National Committee and the Georgia Republican Party said in a statement Saturday night that they sent letters to six counties demanding that all ballots received after Friday be kept separate from other ballots, saying they intend to sue over the issue. The letters were sent to Gwinnett, Fulton, Athens-Clarke, Cobb, Chatham and DeKalb counties.
The Fulton County lawsuit was filed late Friday and cited a section of Georgia law that says ballot drop boxes cannot be open past the end of advance voting, which ended Friday. But state law says voters can deliver their absentee ballots in person to county election offices until the close of polls at 7 p.m. on Election Day. Despite that clear wording, lawyer Alex Kaufman initially claimed in an emergency hearing Saturday that voters aren’t allowed to hand-deliver absentee ballots that were mailed to them.
Kaufman then argued that voters should be blocked from hand-delivering their ballots between the close of early in-person voting on Friday and the beginning of Election Day on Tuesday, even though he said it was fine for ballots to arrive by mail during that period. It has long been the practice for Georgia election offices to accept mail ballots over the counter.
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Kevin Farmer, in an online hearing, repeatedly rejected Kaufman’s arguments before orally ruling against him, saying, "I find that it is not a violation of those two code sections for a voter to hand-return their absentee ballots.”
WSB-TV added that State GOP chairman Josh McKoon accused counties controlled by Democrats of “illegally accepting ballots.” The issue quickly gained traction online Saturday among Republican activists, particularly after a Fulton County election official sent an email to elections workers saying that observers would not be allowed to sit inside election offices while ballots were turned in.
Fulton County elections director Nadine Williams said during the hearing that these were county offices and not polling places, and thus partisan poll watchers have never been allowed to observe those spaces.
