Don’t wait, voters urged in Georgia

ATLANTA — Georgia’s chief election official is urging residents to complete and send in their absentee ballots now instead of waiting.

Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Monday urged the nearly 1 million voters who haven’t returned ballots to do so.

“We want to get it off of people’s kitchen tables and back to your county election office,” the Republican said. The June 9 primary is two weeks from today.

The state has twice postponed primaries because of the coronavirus pandemic. Georgia’s March 24 presidential primaries were first moved to May 19, when voters were set to choose party nominees for other 2020 races including a U.S. Senate contest. As infections and deaths mounted, election day was bumped back again to June 9.

In March, Raffensperger took the unprecedented step of sending absentee ballot applications to all 6.9 million active registered voters statewide.

So far, nearly 510,000 people had returned their ballots as of early Friday, while another 61,000 had voted in person during early voting. Voters can still request mail-in ballots through June 5, but are unlikely to have enough time to receive them by mail and return them by mail if they wait that long. Ballots must be returned to county election offices by 7 p.m. on June 9.

Raffensperger warned Monday that voters could face long waits if they attempt to vote in person either early or on election day because of precautions to prevent the spread of the covid-19 respiratory disease and a shortage of poll workers.

Election officials in Fulton County, Georgia’s most populous, agreed last week to open polls earlier and expand voting sites after lines formed on the first day of early voting.

Fulton County is still running behind on getting absentee ballots mailed. That’s in part because the county is struggling to process more than 27,000 emailed requests.

Two smaller counties, Appling and McDuffie, saw their in-person voting sites shut last week because of coronavirus infections.