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Warnock campaign, Democrats file lawsuit over Saturday voting
Georgia Democrats have filed suit to challenge the state's early voting laws. They want early voting for the runoff on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, but state officials say state law prohibits Saturday voting when it falls near a holiday.
ATLANTA - A Fulton County judge has sided with U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock’s campaign and Democratic groups to allow early voting on Saturday in Georgia's Senate runoff election.
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Thomas A. Cox Jr. herd the case Friday to determine if relief should be granted to the plaintiffs. Lawyers for Democrats argued that Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger changed his interpretation of the law. The state argued that the law provides the rules clearly.
"Based on the Court’s ruling, counties may provide advance voting on Saturday, November 26, 2022. Further, Defendant is hereby enjoined from interfering in efforts by counties to provide for advance voting on Saturday, November 26, 2022," the judge wrote in his in ruling opinion.
Georgia Democrats and the Warnock campaign released the following statement after the ruling:
"Allowing for Saturday early voting is a win for every Georgia voter, but especially for workers and students who will have a greater opportunity to make their voices heard in this election. We look forward to counties announcing that they will provide Georgians the opportunity to cast their ballots on Saturday, November 26th."
A spokesperson for the Georgia Secretary of State's Office, also reacting to the decision, released a statement reading:
"We’ve been following the law on this matter and the law is pretty clear. We disagree with the court’s order and look forward to a prompt appeal by Georgia’s Attorney General."
The lawsuit, filed on Monday by the Democratic Party of Georgia, Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the Warnock campaign, challenges the state’s finding that it would be illegal to hold early voting on Nov. 26, the day after a state holiday. The lawsuit says the state’s interpretation hurts Warnock in particular because Democrats tend to push early voting more than Republicans.
The race between Warnock and his Republican challenger, Herschel Walker, is headed to a Dec. 6 runoff after neither candidate won a majority of votes in the midterm election. Democrats have already secured control of the Senate but are hoping to increase their narrow margin with a Warnock victory.
"Illegal attempts to block Saturday voting are another desperate attempt by career politicians to squeeze the people out of their own democracy and to silence the voices of Georgians," Quentin Fulks, Warnock’s campaign manager, said in a statement. "We’re aggressively fighting to protect Georgia voters’ ability to vote on Saturday."
U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock speaks at a campaign rally at the Tubman Museum on November 17, 2022 in Macon, Georgia. (Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images)
Georgia's Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger dismissed the lawsuit as politics.
"Senator Warnock and his Democratic Party allies are seeking to change Georgia law right before an election based on their political preferences," he said. "Instead of muddying the water and pressuring counties to ignore Georgia law, Senator Warnock should be allowing county election officials to continue preparations for the upcoming runoff."
Walker’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Under Georgia’s 2021 election law, there will be only four weeks before the runoff — with Thanksgiving in the middle. Many Georgians will be offered only five weekdays of early in-person voting beginning Nov. 28. And June’s primary runoffs showed time for mail ballots to be received and returned can be very tight.
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Raffensperger and Deputy Secretary of State Gabriel Sterling had initially said they expected at least some counties would offer voting on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. State law requires at least five weekdays of early in-person balloting beginning Monday, Nov. 28, but also directs Georgia’s 159 counties to open early in-person voting "as soon as possible" in a runoff.
But Sterling last week told reporters that officials had researched the law and concluded that it would be illegal to hold early voting on a day after a state holiday. Thanksgiving and the following Friday are both state holidays. Raffensperger’s office followed up overthe weekend with an official election bulletin to the counties setting the position into writing.
The plaintiffs say Raffensperger’s interpretation "misreads" and "cherry-picks" the law.
They argue that the bar on voting after a holiday applies only to primary and general elections and not to runoffs. They say a 2017 revision of state law dropped the holiday exception for runoffs, and that reading it that way would mandate early voting on Saturday, Nov. 19, an impossibility since state officials don’t plan to certify the midterm election results until Monday, Nov. 21.
"The Secretary’s insistence that counties may not hold advance voting on November 26 therefore has no support in the law," lawyers wrote.
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The lawsuit asks a judge to rule that the law doesn’t bar counties from holding advance voting on Saturday, Nov. 26 and to bar Raffensperger from interfering with counties holding voting on that day. The plaintiffs also ask for an emergency hearing and temporary restraining order.
The DSCC has sent letters encouraging counties to defy Raffensperger and schedule Saturday voting anyway. But the lawsuit notes that the State Election Board might retaliate against counties that go ahead by investigating or suspending election officials. Atlanta’s Fulton County is already under investigation after Republican lawmakers used a provision in Georgia’s 2021 election law to demand a state inquiry.
Saturday voting had less participation during the general election than weekday early voting, but Democrats argue that it benefits people who can’t vote on weekdays and that eliminating Saturday voting would harm Warnock "by eliminating a potential advance voting day that is likely to be used by voters who affiliate with the Democratic Party."
The lawsuit plays out against a yearslong background of clashes over voting in Georgia. In 2018, Democrat Stacey Abrams claimed Republican Brian Kemp used his position as secretary of state to improperly hold back likely Democratic voters in their gubernatorial contest that year. The Abrams-founded Fair Fight Action lost a lawsuit over those claims.
According to the ACLU of Georgia, Fulton, Cobb, Gwinnett, and DeKalb counties will open polls on the Sunday after Thanksgiving, Nov. 26. The ACLU said Clayton, Chatham, Muscogee, Athens-Clarke, Newton, and Rockdale indicated they will provide Sunday voting.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.