I like to vote absentee ballot when I can. Georgia has no-excuse absentee voting, which means you don’t have a doctor’s permission slip or special circumstances to vote absentee.
In past elections, absentee ballots kept us from having to stand in long lines, and also helped keep those lines from being even longer. During COVID, they helped keep us from getting sick.
Frankly, I don’t understand why all states don’t have a mail-in only election systems, since doing so increases voter participation and decreases election day kerfuffles. Unfortunately, though, there seems to be politicians who prefer that people not vote and do everything they can to make it more difficult. Such is life.
Normally, voting by absentee ballot in Georgia has been problem free for us. During COVID, we could even use dropoff boxes for our ballots, which made the process simpler and avoided USPS delays. But this year, both the Chatham county Board of Registrars and seemingly the USPS have let the folks in our county down.
The absentee ballot process was already compromised this year by Secretary of State Raffensperger’s decision that rather than submitting an absentee ballot request just once if you’re elderly or military, we had to submit requests for each election since this year’s election is a ‘special’ one. This caused confusion and likely led to some folks not getting an absentee ballot when they expected to get one.
In addition, the absentee ballot system we can access through the Georgia My Voter web site is supposed to reflect when absentee ballot requests are accepted. However, Chatham county registrar personnel did NOT update the database when the request was accepted. No, instead, they postdated the updates on the same day the absentee ballots were supposedly mailed: October 14th.
I had to email to see if our ballot requests were accepted. Another voter, Randy Ritchie, noted in a comment to the Board of Registrar’s Facebook page:
People, go sign in to your voter portal, look at the notifications. Look at the backdated entries of dates ballots received, then the entry that ballots went out Oct 14th. Yet when I called them on the 13th, they first said no record ballots were requested. Then they found my email of August 20th during that approximately one hour phone call.
And about that mailing date of October 14th…
By law, absentee ballots in this state could be mailed October 7th for this November’s election. The Secretary of State’s website did note that some counties could mail them later, but this begs the question: why?
Why wait an extra week? Especially when there have been changes, particularly in rural voting areas, in how the USPS does handle mail that could result in mail delays. The issues were known in plenty of time to update ballot forms. The turnout, including requests for absentee ballots, is light for this election.
So why wait an extra week?
That extra week could have come in handy in Chatham county when you consider a large block of absentee ballots has gone missing.
The weekend after the absentee ballots were supposedly mailed, I posted in the New Savannah Town Square Facebook page that I hadn’t received mine yet. I updated again, several times, the following week when each day brought another USPS Informed Delivery email with no ballot listed. Others commented on the posts that they or their adult children at school have not received their ballots.
We also contacted the voter registration office, and were assured that replacement ballots would be issued.
Finally, the news media picked up on the missing ballots the end of last week. In the news we heard that the vendor in North Carolina (North Carolina?) had printed out the ballots and dropped them off at the post office on the 15th.
From The Current, we found out that a block of 533 of these ballots supposedly mailed the 15th of October might be missing.
On Oct. 15, a batch of 533 absentee ballots processed by the vendor were transferred to a post office and logged into its system, according to Sabrina German, the office’s supervisor, as well as a statement issued by the registrar’s office on Friday.
Of the 999 applications for mail-in ballots accepted in Chatham County, only six had been returned by late Friday.
As of last Friday, only six ballots of 999 requested have been received,. Only six ballots eleven days before the election. Six ballots with an unknown number of missing ballots that Chatham County supposedly had reissued, thought the exact number of ballots actually missing is completely unknown. We currently don’t know if all missing ballots were reissued since they don’t know what happened to any of them.
The registration office then made a promise to the news organizations last week that those of us with missing ballots would receive them by today, Monday, the 27th.
Nope. Nada. Zip. Today’s USPS Informed delivery shows I’m getting a piece of junk mail, and that’s it.
Well, thank goodness the junk mail is getting through.
At this point in time, even if we receive the ballots tomorrow (and frankly, this is a big if), we can no longer trust that we can turn them around quickly enough for them to arrive by November 4th (the USPS recommends allowing at least five days to ensure your letter is delivered in time). Since the Georgia state legislature won’t allow ballots to be counted that arrive late even when properly dated by the post office, this could mean our votes won’t be counted.
And this is a big deal in more ways than one.
This special election is for two members of the Public Services Commission. Currently all members of the commission are Republican. In addition, all members have demonstrated a remarkably friendly relationship with Georgia Power, to the point of allowing Georgia Power to increase our electrical rates six times since 2023.
Six times, in two years.
This year, the positions of two incumbents, Tim Echols and Fitz Johnson, are up for re-election and they’ve been challenged by Democrats Alicia Johnson and Peter Hubbard, respectively.
The PSC election is a highly contentious one, with Republicans and Georgia Power wanting to keep the incumbents while people of all political parties wanting a change. It is particularly contentious for two reasons: Georgia Power wants to those keep friendly PSC members, and generally, rate payers, don’t; and the race is seen as a possible sign of how well the 2026 midterm elections will go, with Republicans and Democrats both wanting to use the election as a Sign of What Will Come.
At the same time, since this is an off-year election, turnout is low. When you have low turnout and a contentious election you have the recipe for legal challenges regardless of the result. For instance, if a race is close, let’s say within a few hundred votes, and several hundred ballots may have gone missing in Chatham county…well, you can see where this heading. And a simple recount won’t fix the problem: whoever loses in this race could challenge the entire election, and who knows where this could lead. Potentially, we could be looking at a redo of the election, or even an invalidation and possibly having to hold the election of these two positions over until next year.
That extra week the Chatham county Board of Registrars decided we didn’t need could have been used to fix this problem and still allow enough time for people to return their ballots. Now?
It’s a crap shoot.
More importantly, the election, itself, has been compromised. And in today’s political environment, any hint of a compromised election is enough to bring out the hordes. As it is, what’s happening in Chatham county is already being used to target no-excuse absentee voting for the entire state. As noted in The Current:
Election races decided by hundreds, even scores, of votes mean, among other things, that the missing absentee ballots could form the basis of a legal challenge to the vote. As of Friday, 6,645 out of Chatham County’s 231,196 registered voters — or 2.8% — had cast ballots in early in-person voting, according to the registrar’s office website.
More broadly, it adds momentum to calls for curbs in mail-in voting.
So what can we do?
If you haven’t received your absentee ballot yet, and you can vote in person, do so. Early voting is still happening until the 31st. Or you can vote on election day. You can also drop your ballot off at the voter registration office on Eisenhower, or at the dropbox locations at:
- Voter Registration Office (1117 Eisenhower Dr, Suite E)
- Mosquito Control Board (65 Billy B. Hair Drive)
- Islands Library (50 Johnny Mercer Blvd.)
If you can’t vote in person or visit the dropbox locations directly, then get that ballot in the mail as fast as you can. Hopefully, we can still get the ballots processed in time. Knock on wood.
To ensure the ballots are properly handled by the mail, they can be dropped off at the post office. And you don’t have to do this yourself: you can have a friend or relative drop the ballots off for you. It’s against Georgia law for people to drop absentee ballots off at dropboxes for anyone not in their household, but not for them to drop the ballots off at the post office (showing how absolutely idiotic the dropbox law is).
Whatever you have to do, please do it.
As for the Chatham county voter registration, the office supervisor, Sabrina German, noted to the media last week:
“I am glad that we caught it in enough time that we were able to send out a second ballot and that the voters will still have the same chance to actually vote in this particular election.”
Well, Ms. German, the ballot is still, seemingly, in the mail. And no, you didn’t catch any of this in time. As Mr. Richie noted in his comment to the Board of Registrar’s Facebook post:
I’ve been given more than one excuse as to why we didn’t get our absentee ballots. I’ve spoken to the Board of assessors supervisor, then the manager. They have one job, failed. Two disabled seniors, and I’m too sick right now to try and go vote in early voting.
