Georgia county says more than 3,000 absentee ballots being mailed late just days before election

Election officials in Georgia’s third-largest county said they’re late in mailing more than 3,000 absentee ballots to voters just a few days before the election.

Election officials in Cobb County north of Atlanta were using U.S. Postal Service express mail and UPS overnight delivery in an effort to deliver the ballots on time. Mail-in ballots must be returned by Election Day on Tuesday in order to be counted.

“We want to maintain voter trust by being transparent about the situation,” county Board of Elections Chairwoman Tori Silas said in a statement Thursday. “We are taking every possible step to get these ballots to the voters who requested them."

Silas blamed the delay on faulty equipment and a late surge in absentee ballot requests during the week before the Oct. 25 deadline.

The late absentee ballots were being mailed with prepaid express return envelopes, which election officials said would ensure they could be returned on time

Georgia voters have shattered early turnout records since advance voting began Oct. 15. As of Thursday, more than 3.6 million ballots, reflecting more than half the state's active voters, had been cast, according to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger's office. The tally includes more than 226,000 absentees.

In Cobb County, election officials said voters whose awaiting absentee ballots were late could still vote in-person on the final day of early voting Friday or on Tuesday. The county's election headquarters planned to stay open to accept hand-delivered absentees through the weekend and on Monday.

However, the Board of Elections said that more than 1,000 of the absentee ballots being mailed late were being sent to people outside of Georgia.

Two civil rights groups, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Southern Poverty Law Center, filed a lawsuit Friday asking a Cobb County judge to extend the deadline for counting absentees postmarked by Election Day to Nov 8, three days later.

The complaint was filed on behalf of three Cobb County voters who said they still had not received absentee ballots by mail as of Friday. The lawsuit said that although county election officials “have taken some steps to help alleviate the problem, those actions are not nearly enough to safeguard their right to vote.”