Democratic Party of Georgia Files Emergency Motion To Assist Voters, Ensure Every Vote Is Counted

Today, the Democratic Party of Georgia filed an emergency motion seeking an injunction to extend the time for voters to cure rejected absentee and provisional ballots, after the state’s failed implementation of a new voting system left many voters in the dark on the status of their ballots.

As voters are still being counted from Tuesday’s election, the state has failed to provide sufficient notice to voters who used absentee and provisional ballots of whether their ballot is rejected. This means that voters are not given sufficient notice to correct or “cure” their ballots by today’s deadline — and their votes are not counted.

These failures are particularly egregious as many Georgians voted by mail for the June 9th primary due to the coronavirus pandemic. Over 943,000 voters returned an absentee ballot this year, compared to nearly 285,000 in the 2018 election. Furthermore, many voters who applied for but never received an absentee ballot were forced to vote provisionally, along with the myriad other issues faced by voters across the state.

“We are in a global pandemic that makes the ability to vote by mail more important than ever — voters deserve to know that their vote is counted, and have the chance to correct any errors,” said DPG Chairwoman Nikema Williams. “Amid the many issues we saw across the state on Tuesday, Georgia’s failure to communicate with voters means Georgians still don’t know whether their vote was counted in this primary. Our democracy depends on the basic premise that every person’s vote counts. This must be fixed immediately.”

Read the motion here. 

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