Kemp Smacked With TRO Over Rejected Absentee Ballots
U.S. District Judge Leigh May directed Secretary of State Brian Kemp to instruct election officials and county boards of elections that absentee ballots with alleged voter signature mismatches should be marked as “provisional” rather than rejected.
October 24, 2018 at 03:38 PM
5 minute read
A federal judge in Atlanta issued a temporary restraining order Wednesday barring Georgia election officials from rejecting absentee ballots or ballot applications over mismatched signatures without giving voters a chance to contest the decision and confirm their identities.
In a 31-page order, Judge Leigh May of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia directed Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp to instruct election officials and county boards of elections across the state that absentee ballots with alleged voter signature mismatches should be marked as “provisional” rather than rejected. County election officials shall then send a pre-rejection notice to voters and give them an opportunity to resolve the alleged discrepancy.
Kemp, a Republican, is running against Democratic nominee Stacey Abrams for governor.
May said that process could extend for three days following the election and that an absentee voter shall have the right to appeal any rejected ballot.
Each absentee voter whose ballot is called into question must also be provided with instructions on how to verify their ballot, May said.
May gave the parties until Thursday to let her know whether her instructions are confusing or unworkable for election officials tasked with implementing them. But, she warned, “This is not meant to be an opportunity to readdress the propriety of entering the injunction—only its form.”
Sophia Lakin, staff attorney with the ACLU's Voting Rights Project in New York, called the ruling “a huge victory, especially with the midterms just days away.”
May issued the order after a hearing Tuesday. The lawsuit, filed by ACLU lawyers on behalf of the Georgia Muslim Voter Project and Asian-Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta, challenged Georgia election officials' absentee ballot rejections based on comparisons of voter registration signatures with those on absentee ballot applications and the envelopes in which the absentee ballots were sealed.
In her order, May noted that Georgia currently has no procedure for a voter to contest an election official's decision that a signature does not match. By contrast, the judge said, when an absentee ballot is rejected on other grounds, a voter is given notice and a hearing on an expedited basis before an election is certified, as well as an opportunity to appeal.
May also noted in issuing the TRO that county election officials across Georgia are reporting an increase in the volume of absentee ballots, both by mail and in person.
Saying that “the balance of equities and the public interest support an injunction,” May rejected complaints by Kemp lawyers with the office of state Attorney General Chris Carr that salvaging rejected absentee ballots would be “unduly burdensome.”
“The Court does not understand how assuring that all eligible voters are permitted to vote undermines integrity of the election process,” May said. “To the contrary, it strengthens it.”
“We are pleased that the court has enforced the due process guarantees of the U.S. Constitution,” stated Sean J. Young, legal director of the ACLU of Georgia. “Today's ruling is a victory for democracy and for every absentee voter in the state of Georgia.”
Kemp's office referred comments to the state attorney general whose spokeswoman declined comment.
The ACLU filed suit and sought the TRO following news reports that Gwinnett County election officials had, by Oct. 18, rejected 493 absentee ballot applications, nearly 100 of them due to alleged signature mismatches. The suit also claimed that Gwinnett County ballot rejection rates were on the increase and that, by Oct. 12, county officials had rejected nearly 10 percent of all absentee mail ballots.
That suit followed on the heels of a similar lawsuit from Georgia voters filed by Atlanta attorney Bruce Brown and backed by the Coalition for Good Governance, which has sounded alarms about the security of the state's electronic voting system in a separate case seeking a return to paper ballots. This week, the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and the Campaign Legal Center filed appearances in the absentee ballot suit. Tuesday's hearing before May addressed Brown's absentee ballot case as well as the ACLU's.
“We are very pleased that voters who have been rejected because of a signature mismatch will have another chance to have their ballots counted,” Brown said. “In her order, she said the plaintiffs win, win, win again, win, win, win, win, win. Then she said, 'Here's what I'm going to do about it.'”
Yet to be decided are questions Brown's suit raised in addition to the mismatched signature rejections. One concerns ballots rejected over what Brown said was a superfluous request for voters' birth year. Confused voters have instead put the date they filled out the ballot, he said. Brown said the judge has given Kemp and his co-defendants until Monday to address those rejections, among others, and he is hopeful May will issue an order next week.
Brown said the remedy is to direct election officials to cast those ballots rather than reject them. Voters are not able to get an absentee ballot unless they have already qualified to register to vote, which includes proving they are old enough to do so. “Since you are already old enough to get a ballot, they don't need your birth year,” he said. “It's also a mistake unlikely to be made by someone who is trying to defraud somebody.”
Read the order below:
This content has been archived. It is available through our partners, LexisNexis® and Bloomberg Law.
To view this content, please continue to their sites.
Not a Lexis Subscriber?
Subscribe Now
Not a Bloomberg Law Subscriber?
Subscribe Now
NOT FOR REPRINT
© 2024 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.
You Might Like
View AllAkerman Opens Charlotte Office With Focus on Renewable Energy, Data Center Practices
4 minute readWoman's Suit Alleging Negligence to Sex Trafficking by Hotel Tossed by Federal Judge
Supreme Court of Georgia Accepts 2 Petitions for Voluntary Discipline With 2-Year Suspension, 1 Voluntary Surrender of License
Trending Stories
- 1How Amy Harris Leverages Diversity to Give UMB Financial a Competitive Edge
- 2Pa. Judicial Nominee Advances While Trump Demands GOP Unity Against Biden Picks
- 3The Unraveling of Sean Combs: How Legislation from the #MeToo Movement Brought Diddy Down
- 4Publication of Information Regarding Client Matters
- 5The State of Cost Recovery — Post COVID
Who Got The Work
Michael G. Bongiorno, Andrew Scott Dulberg and Elizabeth E. Driscoll from Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr have stepped in to represent Symbotic Inc., an A.I.-enabled technology platform that focuses on increasing supply chain efficiency, and other defendants in a pending shareholder derivative lawsuit. The case, filed Oct. 2 in Massachusetts District Court by the Brown Law Firm on behalf of Stephen Austen, accuses certain officers and directors of misleading investors in regard to Symbotic's potential for margin growth by failing to disclose that the company was not equipped to timely deploy its systems or manage expenses through project delays. The case, assigned to U.S. District Judge Nathaniel M. Gorton, is 1:24-cv-12522, Austen v. Cohen et al.
Who Got The Work
Edmund Polubinski and Marie Killmond of Davis Polk & Wardwell have entered appearances for data platform software development company MongoDB and other defendants in a pending shareholder derivative lawsuit. The action, filed Oct. 7 in New York Southern District Court by the Brown Law Firm, accuses the company's directors and/or officers of falsely expressing confidence in the company’s restructuring of its sales incentive plan and downplaying the severity of decreases in its upfront commitments. The case is 1:24-cv-07594, Roy v. Ittycheria et al.
Who Got The Work
Amy O. Bruchs and Kurt F. Ellison of Michael Best & Friedrich have entered appearances for Epic Systems Corp. in a pending employment discrimination lawsuit. The suit was filed Sept. 7 in Wisconsin Western District Court by Levine Eisberner LLC and Siri & Glimstad on behalf of a project manager who claims that he was wrongfully terminated after applying for a religious exemption to the defendant's COVID-19 vaccine mandate. The case, assigned to U.S. Magistrate Judge Anita Marie Boor, is 3:24-cv-00630, Secker, Nathan v. Epic Systems Corporation.
Who Got The Work
David X. Sullivan, Thomas J. Finn and Gregory A. Hall from McCarter & English have entered appearances for Sunrun Installation Services in a pending civil rights lawsuit. The complaint was filed Sept. 4 in Connecticut District Court by attorney Robert M. Berke on behalf of former employee George Edward Steins, who was arrested and charged with employing an unregistered home improvement salesperson. The complaint alleges that had Sunrun informed the Connecticut Department of Consumer Protection that the plaintiff's employment had ended in 2017 and that he no longer held Sunrun's home improvement contractor license, he would not have been hit with charges, which were dismissed in May 2024. The case, assigned to U.S. District Judge Jeffrey A. Meyer, is 3:24-cv-01423, Steins v. Sunrun, Inc. et al.
Who Got The Work
Greenberg Traurig shareholder Joshua L. Raskin has entered an appearance for boohoo.com UK Ltd. in a pending patent infringement lawsuit. The suit, filed Sept. 3 in Texas Eastern District Court by Rozier Hardt McDonough on behalf of Alto Dynamics, asserts five patents related to an online shopping platform. The case, assigned to U.S. District Judge Rodney Gilstrap, is 2:24-cv-00719, Alto Dynamics, LLC v. boohoo.com UK Limited.
Featured Firms
Law Offices of Gary Martin Hays & Associates, P.C.
(470) 294-1674
Law Offices of Mark E. Salomone
(857) 444-6468
Smith & Hassler
(713) 739-1250