Two federal judges have rejected requests to immediately reopen voter registration in Georgia and Florida as the southeast continues to grapple with significant storm damage ahead of the November election.
US District Judge Eleanor Ross in Atlanta ruled on Thursday that arguments pushed by the NAACP, Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda and the New Georgia Project asking to extend the deadline a week “lacked clarity and detail” as to how specific individuals were harmed.
Attorneys for Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger — both of whom are Republicans — argued there would be a significant “administrative burden” on the state’s elections offices if the voter registration deadline were to be extended.
Ruling from the bench, Ross agreed, saying, “Harms to the state’s interest outweighs the interest of the plaintiffs.”
On Wednesday, a federal judge in Florida similarly turned down a request from civil rights groups to reopen that state’s voter registration window, which closed on Monday just as the state was recovering from Hurricane Helene and bracing for Hurricane Milton.
US District Judge Robert Hinkle, an appointee of former President Bill Clinton, declined the request a day after the case was brought by the League of Women Voters of Florida and the Florida NAACP.
Posted by John3262005
1 Comment
Unsurprising, but sad. More states need same day voter registration to avoid these kinds of games.
Or I guess the alternative, just get rid of voter registration. If we have to present valid ID to vote, why not just make that count as “registration”? Gets rid of (claims) about voting multiple times, needing administrative people to handle registration, the possibility that a disaster will impact registration, need to purge voter rolls, etc, etc, etc.
Of course, then we’d need some kind of laws to make it not burdensome to get and maintain a valid ID, but one GOP attempt to undermine democracy at a time, I guess.