A federal judge rejects a call to reopen voter registration in Georgia after Hurricane Helene

A federal judge said Thursday that she won't order the presidential battleground state of Georgia to reopen voter registration for November’s elections despite recent disruptions to registration caused by Hurricane Helene.

The ruling by U.S. District Judge Eleanor Ross rejected arguments that the state should reopen registration through next Monday. The registration deadline was last Monday and she said in her ruling from the bench on Thursday afternoon that there would be no extension.

A lawsuit filed by the Georgia conference of the NAACP, the Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda and the New Georgia Project had argued that damage and disruptions from Hurricane Helene unfairly deprived people of the opportunity to register.

All three groups said they had to cancel voter registration activities last week. Historically, there’s a spike in Georgia voter registrations just before the deadline, the plaintiffs said.

Ross had expressed skepticism about the plaintiffs' claim in an earlier hearing Wednesday before setting an additional hearing Thursday. She said at the time that plaintiffs hadn't done enough to show people had been harmed. State and Republican Party officials argued that reopening registration would pose a hardship for county election officials and was unnecessary.

Georgia has 8.2 million registered voters, according to online records from Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office. But with Georgia's presidential race having been decided by only 12,000 votes in 2020, a few thousand votes could make a difference in whether Republican Donald Trump or Democrat Kamala Harris wins the state’s 16 electoral votes. At least 10 lawsuits related to election issues have been filed in Georgia in recent weeks.

The lawsuit said the hurricane kept people with driver’s licenses from registering online because of widespread power and internet outages in the eastern half of the state and kept people from registering in person because at least 37 county election offices were closed for parts of last week. The lawsuit also notes that mail pickup and delivery was suspended in 27 counties, including the cities of Augusta, Savannah, Statesboro, Dublin and Vidalia.

A federal judge in Florida denied a request to reopen voter registration in that state after hearing arguments Wednesday. The plaintiffs are considering whether to appeal. The lawsuit brought by the Florida chapters of the League of Women Voters and NAACP contends that thousands of people may have missed the registration deadline because they were recovering from Helene or preparing to evacuate from Milton.

A court in South Carolina extended that state’s registration deadline after Helene and courts in Georgia and Florida extended registration deadlines after 2016’s Hurricane Matthew. In North Carolina, which was more heavily impacted by Hurricane Helene, the registration deadline isn’t until Friday. Voters there can also register and cast a ballot simultaneously during the state’s early in-person voting period, which runs from Oct. 17 through Nov. 2.

The Georgia plaintiffs argued that the shutdown of voter registration violated their rights under the First Amendment and 14th Amendment, which guarantee equal protection and due process to all citizens. They also said the shutdown violates a provision of the 1993 National Voter Registration Act that requires states to accept voter registrations submitted or mailed up to 30 days before an election.

At least 40 advocacy groups asked Republican Gov. Brian Kemp and Raffensperger to extend the registration deadline in affected counties before the Georgia lawsuit was filed.