ATLANTA (AP) – The Democratic Party filed a lawsuit Wednesday over Georgia’s handling of absentee ballots a year after some ballots were rejected for minor reasons such as signatures not exactly matching those on file with the state.
According to the federal lawsuit, absentee voters are not notified of problems with their ballots in a standard way or given enough time to correct them.
It asks that a judge require state elections officials to notify voters of missing signatures within one day of receiving a ballot.
The integrity of Georgia’s elections process was heavily scrutinized during last year’s midterm election, in which Republican Brian Kemp, the state’s top election official at the time, narrowly defeated Democrat Stacey Abrams to become governor.
Thousands of absentee ballots were rejected during the race. Besides inconsistent signatures, other reasons for rejection included missing signatures as well as technical errors, such as writing the current year in a space designated for the voter’s birth.