Judge blocks Georgia from rejecting certain absentee ballots

(Image credit: Jessica McGowan/Getty Images)

published 25 October 2018

A federal judge on Wednesday ordered that Georgia election officials stop tossing out absentee ballots that are being rejected due to suspected signature mismatch.

Voting rights activists, including the American Civil Liberties Union, sued the state, arguing that by throwing out absentee ballots without telling voters or giving them the opportunity to fix the issue, their rights of equal protection and due process are being violated. Georgia election officials countered that this could compromise the integrity of the voting process, but Judge Leigh Martin May said the court "does not understand how assuring that all eligible voters are permitted to vote undermines integrity of the election process. To the contrary, it strengthens it."

May ordered that the ballots be included in the provisional vote tally, with the affected voters given up to three days after the Nov. 6 election to prove their eligibility. It's a blow to Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp, who is also the Republican gubernatorial candidate. He is a champion of the 2017 "exact match" voting law, which lets officials reject voter registration applications that do not match 100 percent with the information available in state databases. At least 53,000 registration applications have been put on hold because of the law.

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

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