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ATLANTA – A federal judge has ordered Georgia to take steps to protect the provisional polls and wait until Friday to certify the mid-term election results that include an unresolved race for the governor.
In a ruling on Monday evening, US District Judge Amy Totenberg ordered the Secretary of State's office to create and publish a hotline or website that would allow voters to check whether their provisional ballot had been counted and, if not, the reason. And, for counties with at least 100 provisional ballots, she ordered the office of the secretary of state to verify, or have the county electoral authorities control, the eligibility of electors who were to vote on a provisional ballot due to registration problems.
Totenberg also said Georgia was not to certify the election results before Friday at 5 pm, which is below the November 20 deadline set by state law.
The state's Chief Electoral Officer, Chris Harvey, said at a hearing last week that the state had planned to certify the election results on Wednesday, a day after the deadline by which counties must certify the results. He added that this would start preparations for possible confrontations, including those already planned in the race of the Secretary of State.
Current unofficial results show that Republican Brian Kemp is leading the pack, making him the winner of one of the country's most important contests. But Democrat Stacey Abrams is holding enough votes to put Kemp under the threshold of majority and force a second round on December 4.
The Totenberg order arises from a lawsuit filed on November 5 by Common Cause Georgia. He accuses Kemp, who was the highest election official in the state until his resignation from the post of secretary of state last week, to act recklessly after revealing a vulnerability in the database. Georgian electoral inscriptions shortly before the elections.
Kemp's actions have increased the risk of eligible voters being illegally removed from the voter registration database or their registration information being illegally tampered with, the trial said.
Sara Henderson, executive director of Common Cause Georgia, said in an email statement that the decision helped boost voter confidence in the election. A spokesperson for the Secretary of State's office did not respond to an email sent late Monday to solicit comments.
Totenberg's order does not change Tuesday's deadline for counties to certify their results. But the Abrams campaign began a lawsuit on Sunday demanding that a federal court postpone the deadline to Wednesday, while demanding that the electoral authorities count certain provisional and postal ballots that have been or would be rejected for "elections." arbitrary reasons ".
"I am fighting for our democracy to work for and represent all who have ever trusted it – I fight for every Georgian who voted with the promise that his vote would count," said Abrams in a statement explaining his position. refusal to end his candidacy to become the first black woman elected governor of American history.
The Kemp campaign countered that the latest Abrams effort is "a shame for democracy" and ignores the mathematical realities. "Obviously, Stacey Abrams is not ready for his 15 minutes of glory to end," said Kemp spokesman Ryan Mahoney.
As of Monday night, no hearing had been scheduled for oral argument, but the Abrams campaign was expecting a federal court in Atlanta to decide to hold a hearing on Tuesday, given the time constraints.
Unofficial returns show that Kemp has a lead of nearly 60,000 votes over more than 3.9 million votes. Abrams would need a net gain of about 21,000 votes to force a second round on Dec. 4.
The Associated Press did not call the race.
The race in Georgia, as well as the clashes between governors and the Florida Senate, which require a recount, are among the final steps of a mid-term election cycle that has already allowed Democrats to carry serious blows to President Donald Trump.
The Democrats have already won the House, overturned seven governor seats and recovered more than 300 legislative seats in the country's state palaces. The GOP has maintained its majority in the Senate and could still expand it. But he is seeking to hold the governor's homes in Florida and Georgia to deprive the Democrats of significant gains on the presidential battlefields ahead of the 2020 elections.
Republicans have occupied the governor's mansion in Georgia since 2003 and Florida since 1999, and Trump attaches great importance to both states, endorsing the Kemp and GOP appointments in Florida, Ron DeSantis, while they were participating in competitive primaries before campaigning for them. before the elections on November 6th.
Georgian Acting Secretary of State Robyn Crittenden on Monday ordered county officials to count some provisional votes that had been rejected because voters had not indicated their year of birth at the time. provided that the identity and eligibility of the elector are always established.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution announced that the state's Electoral Council had asked Crittenden to send a letter explaining to county election officials how to handle mail-order polls.
Republican Governor Nathan Deal named Crittenden to replace Kemp, who resigned last week after proclaiming victory in the governor's race. He called his margin – 50.3% of the vote – "clear and convincing" but said he wanted the Georgians to have confidence in the certification process.
Crittenden's directive was consistent with some form of relief sought in the course of the Abrams campaign, but rejected another.
During the postal vote, voters must sign an oath and write their address and year of birth. The prosecution was asking the judge to order county election officials to accept all the mail ballots that were missing or missing information about the oath, as long as this does not prevent "in essence" not the officials to verify the identity of the absent voter.
The complaint states that at least 1,095 qualified voters who voted by correspondence in Gwinnett County were "arbitrarily and illegally denied" due to missing or insufficient information.
Under Georgian law, any problem that has caused an elector to vote provisionally must be resolved within three days of the election – on November 9 for that election. The prosecution requests that county election officers be required to consider evidence of eligibility until Wednesday at 5 pm
Crittenden's guidelines to the counties indicated that the November 9 deadline for verifying the eligibility of the provisional ballots was set by state law.
The prosecution also requested that the provisional votes cast by a registered voter in another county be counted as if the elector had appeared in the wrong constituency. The complaint indicates that of the 1,556 provisional ballots that Fulton County rejected on November 9, nearly 1,000 were disqualified because they had been elected by voters whose registration records showed them enrolled in another county.
In addition, the Abrams campaign calls for any court decision in the case to be applied retroactively to counties that have already certified their declaration, which means that these counties should reopen their counting process using new standards, and then submit updated statements to the State.
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Follow Barrow and Brumback on Twitter at https://twitter.com/BillBarrowAP and https://twitter.com/katebrumback.
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