ATLANTA– At least for now, a federal judge will not order the state of Georgia to reopen voter registration for the November elections.
U.S. District Judge Eleanor Ross ruled after a hearing on Wednesday that three voting rights groups have not yet done enough to prove that the harm and disruptions of Hurricane Helene last week wrongly denied people the opportunity to register. Monday was the registration deadline for Georgia. Instead, Ross set a new hearing Thursday to consider more evidence and legal arguments.
Ross questioned whether the groups had proven they suffered injuries, noting that prosecutors have not yet produced a single person who says they were unable to register to vote because of the storm.
“You didn’t get me close enough to see the injury,” Ross said as he denied the plaintiffs’ request.
State officials and the Republican Party argue it would place a heavy burden on counties to order them to register additional voters as they prepare for early in-person voting that begins 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 has been a spike in voter registrations in Georgia right before the deadline, prosecutors said.
“Because these voters were unable to register before the Oct. 7 deadline, they are being denied their basic right to vote,” said Amir Badat, an attorney with the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund representing the plaintiffs.
Georgia has 8.2 million registered voters, according to online data from Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office. But with Georgia’s 2020 presidential race decided by just 12,000 votes, a few thousand votes could make a difference in whether Republican Donald Trump or Democrat Kamala Harris wins the state’s 16 electoral votes.
The groups say the storm prevented people from registering online widespread power and internet outages and kept people from registering in person because at least 37 county election offices were closed for parts of the past week. They also note that postal service has been suspended for a time in 27 counties, including the cities of Augusta, Savannah, Statesboro, Dublin and Vidalia.
Closed offices and delayed mail are especially important for people who don’t have identification cards and need to register in person or by mail, said Julie Houk of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.
Houk said county election offices were understandably closed because of the hurricane, despite state law requiring them to be open.
“On the other hand, the state wants to interpret its deadline narrowly against people who will lose the fundamental right to vote,” she said.
Senior Assistant Attorney General Elizabeth Young said a recent U.S. Supreme Court case limits associations’ ability to file these types of lawsuits. She also argued that prosecutors should sue county election officials since they have the primary responsibility to process voter registration applications. She said neither Raffensperger nor Gov. Brian Kemp, the named defendants, have the power to extend voter registration deadlines.
Young said the voting rights groups and anyone who wanted to register were hurt by the hurricane, not by the government’s actions.
“They have not identified any claimants who they believe have been harmed by not registering to vote,” she said, adding that counties “do not need this additional burden placed on them.”
Young and Brad Carver, an attorney for the state and national Republican Party, both argued that people could have registered earlier.
“We should point out that the registration period has been open for a very long time,” Carver said. “This court must take into account that people could have registered for many, many months.”
A federal judge in Florida on Wednesday denied a request to reopen voter registration in that state after hearing arguments. Prosecutors are considering whether to appeal. The lawsuit filed by the Florida chapters of the League of Women Voters and NAACP claims that thousands of people may have missed the registration deadline because they were recovering from Helene or preparing to evacuate from Milton.
A court in South Carolina extended that state’s registration deadline after Helene, and courts in Georgia and Florida extended registration deadlines after 2016’s Hurricane Matthew. In North Carolina, which was hit harder by Hurricane Helene, the registration deadline isn’t until Friday. Voters there can also register and vote at the same time during the state’s early in-person voting period, which runs from Oct. 17 through Nov. 2.
