Efforts to extend voter registration are rejected in Georgia and North Carolina,

Courts turn down extensions in North Carolina, Georgia.

RALEIGH, N.C. — Some North Carolina voters who want to expand early in-person voting in the presidential battleground state lost their case before a federal appeals court Wednesday, and in Georgia a federal judge refused to extend the voter registration deadline again for counties stricken by Hurricane Matthew.

But a voters’ group in Virginia still held out hope of extending that state’s registration deadlines.

A three-judge panel on the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied the emergency motion focused on five North Carolina counties that include the cities of Charlotte, Greensboro, Winston-Salem and Wilmington. A trial court judge refused the same request last week.

The voters’ lawyers argued the counties weren’t complying with the 4th Circuit’s ruling in July striking down portions of a 2013 law that reduced the early-voting period by seven days. The period now covers 17 days, beginning today. The voters said election officials should have allowed additional early voting on Sunday, during the first seven days of the period, or on the Saturday afternoon before Election Day.

Lawyers for the state and GOP Gov. Pat McCrory told the courts that county and state election boards abided by the ruling, which reverted ballot-access laws to where they were before the 2013 law approved by Republican legislators. They also wrote this week that making 11th-hour changes would create more confusion and administrative burdens. The court clerk, on behalf of the three judges who struck down the 2013 North Carolina law, filed a three-sentence order denying the voters’ request. It wasn’t immediately clear if the voters would seek relief at the U.S. Supreme Court. The panel ruled in July that Republicans had approved the 2013 law with “discriminatory intent” against black voters, who disproportionately support Democrats.

A state judge already extended a North Carolina voter-registration deadline until Wednesday in the counties hardest hit by Hurricane Matthew. But that deadline only applies to people who wish to mail an absentee ballot or who want to vote on Election Day.

People can still register to vote and cast their ballots if they visit an early-voting center anywhere in the state, but residents pushed out of their homes by Matthew’s record floods may find any of the voting options challenging.

There are 6.8 million registered voters in North Carolina. Early in-person voting is very popular, representing 56 percent of the ballots cast in the 2012 election.

Joining the motion for additional early voting was Marc Elias, the top lawyer for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. The campaign isn’t a party in the case, but Republicans have pointed out the connection.

In Georgia, meanwhile, U.S. District Court Judge William T. Moore Jr. denied a request from the American Civil Liberties Union to allow six additional days for registration in six coastal Georgia counties that Gov. Nathan Deal ordered to evacuate ahead of Hurricane Matthew.

The ACLU sued on behalf of two Georgia teens who had not yet registered and the state NAACP, which planned registration drives during the final week to sign up new voters for the Nov. 8 elections. The suit argued that the Oct. 6 mandatory evacuation order closed local elections offices and prevented residents of coastal counties with large African-American populations from joining the voter rolls during the final days.

In Virginia, a civil rights group asked a court Tuesday to extend the registration deadline by at least three days after technical problems with the state’s online system prevented some residents from registering to vote.

Local news organizations report the lawsuit was filed by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law on behalf of Kathy and Michael Kern, a Charlottesville couple who failed to register by Monday’s deadline after the website crashed.