Uncertainty lingers in Ga. election
Abrams seeking to force runoff in governor’s race
ATLANTA— After two federal court rulings and a flurry of legal filings over a 24-hour period, uncertainty still hangs over Georgia’s midterm elections, including the still undecided race for governor.
Unofficial results in one of the nation’s hottest midterm contests give Republican Brian Kemp a slim majority. But Democrat Stacey Abrams maintains that enough uncounted absentee, mail-in and provisional ballots remain to force a Dec. 4 runoff and keep alive her bid to become the first black woman in American history to be elected governor of a state.
In the week since voters went to the polls, arguments over certain provisional and absentee ballots have been presented at a dizzying pace before several different judges in federal court.
Among them was a lawsuit filed Sunday by Abrams’ campaign seeking an extension by one day of the deadline for county election officials to certify their results. As a hearing drew to a close just before the 5 p.m. Tuesday deadline, U.S. District Judge Steve Jones said he wouldn’t extend the deadline because all the counties had likely already certified their results or were about to, and there were other protections in place.
All but 16 of the state’s 159 counties had certified their results by Tuesday evening, Secretary of State spokeswoman Candice Broce said in an email.
Jones said he hopes to rule on the other requests from Abrams’ campaign by noon Wednesday.
In a separate case, U.S. District Judge Leigh May on Tuesday ordered Gwinnett County election officials not to reject absentee ballots just because the voter’s birth year is missing or wrong and to count any that were cast in the Nov. 6 election.
She also ordered the county to delay certification of its election results until those ballots have been counted.
Jones said he will consider whether he should effectively extend May’s order to Georgia’s other 158 counties. He said that under Crittenden’s guidance, counties don’t have to reject absentee ballots that are missing a year of birth if there’s enough other information to verify the voter but her guidance fails to say they shouldn’t reject them. He said that could cause absentee voters to be treated differently, depending on where they live.
U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg late Monday ordered state officials not to do their final certification of election results before 5 p.m. Friday. State law sets a Nov. 20 deadline.
Meanwhile, protesters, including a state senator, were arrested Tuesday during a demonstration at the Georgia Capitol calling for uncounted ballots to be tallied.
“I’m being arrested because I refused to leave the floor of this building where I’m a state senator,” state Sen. Nikema Williams said as she was escorted from the building. “I wasn’t yelling. I wasn’t chanting. I was standing peacefully beside constituents I represent.”
The Georgia Department of Public Safety said a total of 15 people were arrested on charges of disrupting orderly conduct of official business and were taken to the Fulton County jail.
After being released from the jail later Tuesday, Williams said she was targeted as a black woman. The Abrams campaign called for charges against Williams to be dropped.
Unofficial returns show Kemp with a lead just shy of 60,000 votes out of more than 3.9 million cast. Abrams would need a net gain of about 21,000 votes to force a runoff.