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Spalding County Bd. of Elections v. McCord

Electors do not have to state any reason for casting a vote via absentee ballot.

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On December 1, 2009, the Spalding County Board of Elections supervised a run-off election for the District 6 seat on the City of Griffin Board of Commissioners. The incumbent, appellee Rodney McCord, lost by 25 votes to appellant Shaheer Beyah. McCord filed a timely election contest in the Superior Court of Spalding County, alleging that a number of electors greater than the margin of victory in the runoff had illegally cast absentee ballots because they did not have one of the six reasons for voting by absentee ballot specified in OCGA § 21-2-380 a. As Section 21-2-380 existed on December 1, 2009, subsection a defined an “absentee elector” as an elector who had one of six reasons to vote by absentee ballot e.g., being older than age 75, while subsection b provided that an elector who wanted to cast an absentee ballot “shall not be required to provide a reason” for doing so. After an evidentiary hearing, the trial court ruled that, under subsection b, electors could vote by absentee ballot without stating whether they had one of the six reasons specified by subsection a, but that the electors, in fact , had to have one of those reasons to be eligible to cast an absentee ballot. The court also found that at least 25 voters who voted by absentee ballot were not qualified to do so under OCGA § 21-2-380 a, casting the result of the election into doubt. The court therefore invalidated the election and ordered a new election to occur on March 10, 2010. The Board of Elections and Beyah promptly appealed and sought a stay of the trial court’s order, which we granted. For the reasons that follow, we now reverse.

1. Understanding the meaning of the statutory provisions applicable to absentee voting in 2009 requires an understanding of the history of the relevant legislative enactments before and after that time.

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