ATLANTA (AP) — A Georgia judge on Saturday dismissed a Republican lawsuit trying to block counties from opening election offices on Saturdays and Sundays to allow voters to drop off their mail-in ballots in person.
The lawsuit only mentioned Fulton County, a Democratic stronghold that includes most of the city of Atlanta and 11% of the state’s voters. But other populous counties that tend to vote Democratic also announced that their election offices would be open over the weekend to allow absentee ballots to be returned by hand.
Fulton County spokeswoman Jessica Corbett Dominguez said 105 ballots were received Saturday at the four locations in that county.
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 separated from other ballots, saying they intend to file a lawsuit over the issue. Letters were sent to Chatham, Athens-Clarke, Cobb, DeKalb, Fulton and Gwinnett counties.
The Fulton County lawsuit was filed late Friday and cited a section of Georgia law that says polls cannot be opened after the end of advance voting, which ended Friday. But state law says voters can drop off their absentee ballots in person at county elections offices until polls close at 7 p.m. on Election Day. Despite that clear wording, attorney Alex Kaufman initially claimed at an emergency hearing Saturday that voters are not allowed to hand-deliver absentee ballots mailed to them.
Kaufman then argued that voters should be prohibited from hand-delivering their ballots between the end of early in-person voting on Friday and the beginning of Election Day on Tuesday, though he said it was fine for mail-in ballots to arrive during that period. . It has long been the practice for Georgia elections offices to accept mail-in ballots without a counter.
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Kevin Farmer, in an online hearing, repeatedly rejected Kaufman’s arguments before orally ruling against him.
“I find that it is not a violation of those two sections of the law for a voter to manually return their absentee ballots,” Farmer said.
Republicans have been focused on holding elections in Fulton County for years, after President Donald Trump falsely blamed Fulton County workers for defrauding him in Georgia’s 2020 election.
State Republican Party Chairman Josh McCone accused Democratic-controlled counties of “illegally accepting ballots.” The issue quickly gained attention online Saturday among Republican activists, especially after a Fulton County elections official sent an email to election workers saying observers would not be allowed to sit inside election offices while ballots are being delivered.
These were county offices, not polling places, and therefore partisan poll watchers were never allowed to monitor those places, Fulton County Elections Director Nadine Williams said during the hearing.
But hours later, Williams sent an email explaining that the operation should be open to the public and no credentials or badges were needed. She noted that members of the independent monitoring team that monitors election operations in Fulton County were also on site and that investigators from the Secretary of State’s Office may also be present.
