Georgia judge rejects Republican lawsuit seeking to block acceptance of hand-returned mail ballots in Fulton County
Source: CBS News/AP
November 2, 2024 / 7:24 PM EDT
A Georgia judge on Saturday rejected a Republican lawsuit trying to block counties from opening election offices on Saturday and Sunday to let voters hand in their mail ballots in person.
The lawsuit only named Fulton County, a Democratic stronghold that includes most of the city of Atlanta and is home to 11% of the state's voters. But at least five other populous counties that tend to vote for Democrats also announced election offices would open over the weekend to allow hand return of absentee ballots.
The 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.
Read more: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/georgia-judge-republican-lawsuit-hand-returned-mail-ballots-fulton-county/
William Seger
(11,067 posts)usonian
(14,268 posts)All these attempts to disenfranchise voters has one major beneficiary, and likely benefactor.
Who else benefits from Americans fighting other Americans? And he has a zombie army in this country, hypnotized by RW media.
royable
(1,371 posts)* Ballots filled out on Sundays should not be accepted.
* Ballots accepted at drive-up ballot drop-off sites are limited to those coming from people driving pickup trucks.
* Ballots from spouses must match or, if they don't, the husband's votes overrule.
* Ballots from same-sex couples and single people will not be accepted.
* Ballots filled out, mailed, or hand-delivered by people wearing fingernail polish will not be accepted since the nail polish could affect the calibration of ballot-scanning machinery.
* Ballots from foreign nationals residing in NATO-member countries will not be accepted.
* Mailed ballots postmarked on days of the week ending in "-day" will not be accepted.
* In-person voting will not be allowed by those who Pytor, sitting over in the corner, doesn't like the look of.
Martin68
(24,633 posts)an effort to prevent voters from personally dropping their absentee ballots off at election offices?