March 13, 2019
By Ashley Bridges | WSAV | March 12, 2019
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ATLANTA (WSAV) - A lawsuit filed Monday hopes to tackle problems voters encountered during the 2018 election in Georgia.
The suit isn’t against the top state elections office or the county elections boards. Instead, it’s focused on county commissioners for allegedly failing to give their election boards the money they need to do their job.
Hours-long lines, missing power cords and uncounted absentee ballots were just a few of the issues reported in the election.
And while some politicians have said lawsuits about elections are just sore losers -- this one is hitting both sides of the party line in Cobb, Fulton, DeKalb and Gwinnett counties.
"[It’s a] nonpartisan lawsuit run by both Democrats and Republicans, and both parties have failed to protect sacred and constitutional right to vote for all citizens,” said Sean Young, Legal Director for The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Georgia.
ACLU’s Executive Director Andrea Young says the issues directly impact voters’ most basic rights.
"When you have insufficient resources, who are the people hurt? The people who work an hourly wage, the people younger, juggling a job, kids, they can't wait four hours to cast a ballot,” she said, adding, “The denial of readily available polling places is same as denying the right to vote altogether."
While those cited are metro counties, the idea behind the suit is that if these counties have more resources to get their acts together -- they can model best practices to help voters in more rural counties as well.