(SRN NEWS/AP) – At least for now, a federal judge won’t order the Georgia to reopen voter registration for November’s elections.
U.S. District Judge Eleanor Ross ruled after a Wednesday hearing that three voting rights groups haven’t yet done enough to prove that damage and disruptions from Hurricane Helene unfairly deprived people of the opportunity to register last week. Monday was Georgia’s registration deadline. Instead, Ross set another hearing for Thursday to consider more evidence and legal arguments.
State officials and the state Republican Party argue it would be a heavy burden on counties to order them to register additional voters as they prepare for early in-person voting to begin next Tuesday.
The lawsuit was filed by the Georgia conference of the NAACP, the Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda and the New Georgia Project. All three groups say they had to cancel voter registration activities last week. Historically, there’s a spike in Georgia voter registrations just before the deadline, the plaintiffs said.
Georgia has 8.2 million registered voters, according to online records from Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office. But with Georgia’s presidential race having been decided by only 12,000 votes in 2020, a few thousand votes could make a difference in whether Republican Donald Trump or Democrat Kamala Harris wins the state’s 16 electoral votes. At least 10 lawsuits related to election issues have been filed in Georgia in recent weeks.
The groups say the storm kept people with driver’s licenses from registering online because of widespread power and internet outages in the eastern half of the state and kept people from registering in person because at least 37 county election offices were closed for parts of last week. The lawsuit also notes that mail pickup and delivery was suspended in 27 counties, including the cities of Augusta, Savannah, Statesboro, Dublin and Vidalia.