A group of voting rights groups argue that not extending the deadline to register could keep “tens of thousands of Georgia residents” from voting this fall. Jill Nolin/Georgia Recorder
A federal judge has rejected an attempt by voting rights groups in Georgia to extend the state’s deadline to register to vote because of Hurricane Helene.
Judge Eleanor L. Ross with the Atlanta-based Northern District of Georgia ruled from the bench Thursday afternoon after concluding that the groups were unable to muster enough compelling evidence that their voter registration efforts were thwarted by the storm.
The attorneys for the plaintiffs offered up representatives of the Georgia conference of the NAACP and Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda who described the power and internet outages, shuttered government offices and other impediments that followed Helene and hindered their voter outreach efforts during the busy last week to register.
“Most people couldn’t even get out of their neighborhoods,” said the Rev. Christopher Johnson with the Greater Augusta Interfaith Coalition, which includes the NAACP.
But Ross said the testimony was too short on details. The witnesses offered a few vague examples of people who they said tried to register in the final week but were unable to do so. None of them appeared in person or by video Thursday to help bolster the case.
Attorneys for the state also argued that the lawsuit targeted the wrong players.
The Georgia NAACP, Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda and New Georgia Project sued Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, arguing that not extending the deadline to register could keep “tens of thousands of Georgia residents” from voting this fall. The lawsuit was filed Monday, which was the deadline to register to vote.
They had asked the judge to extend the deadline by seven days for the entire state, which was at one point all under a state of emergency. The governor recently extended that declaration to 66 counties.
The Republican National Conference and Georgia Republican Party intervened on the state’s behalf – a sign of the stakes at hand. Georgia’s 2020 presidential election was decided by less than 12,000 votes.
Elizabeth Young, an attorney with the Georgia Attorney General’s Office, argued that the lawsuit should have targeted county officials and more narrowly focused on the hardest-hit areas. She said the Secretary of State largely plays the role of a “functionary” in the voter registration process.
“It’s the counties that do the actual registering,” she said.
Ross also sided with the state’s argument that extending the deadline to register at this point would create more of a burden on the state as election officials head into the early voting next week.
An attorney for the plaintiffs declined to comment when asked whether they would appeal the decision.
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