A federal judge has denied a request to extend Georgia’s voter registration deadline to Monday despite power outages and damage caused by Hurricane Helene.
The deadline to register for the Nov. 5 general election was Monday. But three civil rights groups — the Georgia State Conference of the NAACP, the Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda and the New Georgia Project — filed a lawsuit against Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger seeking an extension because of the hurricane.
At a hearing Thursday in Atlanta, U.S. District Judge Eleanor Ross denied the request. She said the plaintiffs had not established that Kemp or Raffensperger had the authority to extend the deadline. And she said the plaintiffs had failed to show that harm to unspecified voters outweighed the state’s interest in the orderly operation of elections.
Hurricane Helene dropped more than 11 inches of rain on Georgia when it hit two weeks ago. It caused widespread flooding and power outages, and at least 33 people died in the state.
The civil rights groups argued that power and internet outages, road closures, government shutdowns and the general devastation wrought by the hurricane likely prevented tens of thousands of people from registering to vote in the days before the deadline. The groups said they closed offices and canceled planned voter registration events.
Attorneys for the state and the Georgia Republican Party argued that neither Kemp nor Raffensperger had the authority to extend the voter registration deadline. That power, they argued, lies with voter registration officials in Georgia’s 159 counties, who were not parties to the lawsuit.
The state’s attorneys also argued that the hurricane had not significantly hindered voter registration. In the week leading up to the deadline, counties processed nearly 47,000 voter registrations and were still processing tens of thousands more.
Extending the deadline, they said, would unduly burden county election workers preparing for the start of early voting Tuesday.
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