ATLANTA – A federal judge ordered election officials in Georgia to review all the provisional ballots cast during the midterm elections and banned the state from certifying elections before Friday.

And another judge ruled on Tuesday that postal ballots that had been rejected due to birthdate issues should be counted.

Georgia's fierce fight for the governor remains undecided. Republican Brian Kemp leads Democrat Stacey Abrams with nearly 59,000 votes.

Kemp was declared the winner of the vote last week, resigned from his position as Georgian state secretary and appointed a transition team.

Abrams refused to concede. Supporters filed lawsuits demanding that the time limits for accepting votes and counting certificates be extended and that rejected ballots be reconsidered.

In a decision released last Monday, US District Judge Amy Totenberg ordered election officials to provide reports explaining why every voter was required to vote, and to set up a hotline or website to allow voters to vote. voters to determine if their provisional ballot had been counted.

Counties are required to certify their accounts no later than 5 pm Tuesday.

Prior to Totenberg's decision, state election officials had planned to certify the elections on Wednesday. State law requires that Secretary of State, Robyn Crittenden, who will succeed Kemp, certify it no later than 20 November.

Totenberg has ruled in response to a lawsuit brought by Common Cause Georgia against Kemp in his capacity as secretary of state. The monitoring group accused Kemp of negligently administering an election in which there was an "unsecured and unreliable voter registration database".

"According to the Complainant's complaint," Totenberg writes, "the information contained in the state registration server, used in polling stations to determine whether electors have the right to vote, is vulnerable to multiple security breaches and exploitable by the manipulation of voter data ".

It noted that 21,190 provisional ballots had been tabled at mid-term.

Common Cause Georgia has sought to ensure that all provisional ballots for eligible voters are properly counted. Director Sara Henderson described the decision as "a victory for Georgian voters".

"We are all stronger when every eligible voter is allowed to participate in our elections," she said in a statement. "This victory helps build voter confidence in our elections."

A spokeswoman for the secretary of state said officials are studying the order and considering their options with a legal advisor.

In a separate decision on Tuesday, a federal judge ruled that ballots that had been rejected due to birthdate problems should be counted.

Lauren Groh-Wargo, head of the Abrams campaign, said the court's decisions "outweigh the fundamental right of Georgians, the right to vote".

"Given the confusion spawned by the Secretary of State's office last week and the number of voters who experienced irregularities regarding their registration status, these victories were necessary steps in the fight against them." to count each eligible vote in Georgia, "said Groh-Wargo in a statement. .

"We remain grateful to groups such as Common Cause who know that there is more than one campaign: it is about committing to a fairer and more just system. democratic."

The Kemp campaign claims that it will prevail despite court rulings.

"As the Democrats try to undermine Brian Kemp's convincing victory seven days ago, we remain confident in the local election officials who certify the results," spokesman Cody Hall said in a statement.

Abrams, 44, is trying to become the first democratic governor elected in Georgia for 20 years and the first black female governor of the country. Kemp, 55, tries to keep the office in the hands of Republicans.

During the campaign, Abrams and his supporters accused Kemp, secretary of state in Georgia, of trying to crack down on the Democratic vote by removing voters from the lists.

Kemp's office said that he was investigating the Democratic State party for what he called an "unsuccessful attempt to hack the voter registration system of the government." State".

Both parties denounced a racist automated appeal against Abrams.

Advocates of Abrams believe that there could be enough ballots in circulation to trigger a recount or a second round election.

A second-round election, held when no candidate wins more than 50 percent of the vote, would pit the first two – Kemp and Abrams – against a face-to-face vote next month.

Abrams Campaign filed a complaint on Sunday asking a federal judge to order election officials to count the provisional and correspondence ballots cast in the governor's race, and to postpone the deadline for counties to certify Election.

Crittenden, the state secretary, sent a letter to county election officials Monday afternoon enjoining them to accept the mail ballots, whose elector's date of birth is missing. She added that officials can check the identity of the voter with his signature or other information provided on the ballot.

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