The ACLU of Georgia filed a lawsuit against the Cobb County Board of Elections after officials investigated and discovered more than 1,000 requested absentee ballots were never mailed. According to the complaint, filed Sunday in Cobb County Superior Court, 1,036 people who requested absentee ballots on Oct. 13 or Oct. 22 never received their ballots. The lawsuit alleges that many of those people contacted the county elections office and were told that the ballots had likely already been mailed and that they would have to wait. Since the error was discovered just days before Election Day, the complaint asks the court to order the county board to send replacement ballots via overnight mail to those who have not yet received them, in order to extend the deadline for receiving ballots for those particular ballots by the Nov. 14 deadline for uniformed and overseas voters, and to allow any of those voters who do not receive ballots by noon tomorrow to use the federal absentee ballot. “If there is no relief, these voters likely will not be able to participate in the November 8, 2022 general election, despite properly registering to vote, requesting their absentee ballot by the absentee ballot request deadline, and frequently contacting the Cobb Council multiple times on their own to find out about the status of their absentee request,” the complaint states. HUMAN ERROR RESULTS IN OVER 1,000 EXCLUSIVE ABSENCES IN METRO ATLANTA BEFORE INTERIOR Cobb County officials said an investigation revealed more than 1,000 absentee ballots were never mailed to voters. (Cobb County) Director of Elections and Registration Janine Eveler attributed the situation to human error, with new staff not following procedures to ensure ballots were mailed. In all, the county had received applications for about 30,000 absentee ballots, according to the complaint. In a statement, ACLU of Georgia senior voting rights attorney Rahul Garabadu blamed Georgia’s new election law for the problem, even though it didn’t mention it at all in the lawsuit. STACEY ABRAMS SAYS SHE WILL BE GOVERNOR OF GEORGIA IF VOTERS CAN BOOST GOV. “VOTER SUPPRESSION” OF KEP “There is a direct correlation between the state’s sweeping anti-voter law, SB 202, and Cobb County’s failure to get over a thousand registered voters their ballots,” Garabadu said. “The anti-voter law put tremendous pressure on election officials to fulfill a number of responsibilities on a very tight deadline, and in Cobb County, that pressure resulted in a massive error and hundreds of voters were at risk of being disenfranchised.” Fox News reached out to the Cobb County Board of Elections and Registration and the ACLU of Georgia for comment, but neither immediately responded. CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP Garabadu’s claim echoes those of Democrats such as Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams and President Biden that Georgia’s election law is unfair and suppresses votes. Early voting data, however, showed Georgia set a new record for the most ballots its citizens cast before Election Day in a midterm election, according to state election officials. The early voting period in Georgia began on October 17th and ended on November 4th. More than 2.5 million people have voted so far, between early voting and absentee ballots, reaching nearly 2.6 million in the 2020 presidential election. Sarah Rumpf of Fox News contributed to this report. Ronn Blitzer is a Fox News Digital reporter covering politics and breaking news.
