Vote by Mail in Georgia is Not Always Easy for Voters of Color

The threat of Coronavirus or COVID-19 pushed Georgia officials to delay the 2020 General and Presidential Primary from March 24th to June 9th. The Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, decided to implement a statewide absentee ballot program for active voters. This program will mail absentee ballot request forms to all 6.9 million active voters in the state; voters must fill out the form and select their party of choice in order to receive the corresponding ballot. 

However, Georgians are not new to the idea of absentee voting; according to the U.S Election Assistance Commission, almost  2.5 million or 58.5% of all votes cast in the 2016 elections were in the form of early, mail or absentee ballots. Furthermore, according to the Secretary of State’s office, in 2018 almost 9% or 209,147 of all counted votes were submitted by mail alone. This shows that Georgian voters are comfortable with broadening the voting process to accommodate all potential electors. 

As prevalent as Vote-By-Mail (VBM) voting has become in recent years within Georgia, communities of color have been disenfranchised during the process. In 2018, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on behalf of the Georgia Muslim Voter Project and Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta filed a lawsuit against Gwinnett County for issues with absentee ballots. Of the 595 rejected absentee ballots from Gwinnett, more than 300 of the rejected ballots belonged to African American and Asian American voters. Gwinnett County’s defense cited the “signature match” law that required a voter’s signature on the ballot to be an exact match to any previous signature on record. A judge in the Northern District of Georgia ruled in the ACLU’s favor and temporarily blocked enforcement of signature matching.

Now that Georgia is moving to a VBM system in response to COVID-19 for the primaries, our local Board of Elections (BOE) should adopt best practices and make this an easy transition for voters. For example, local BOE’s can organize third-party facilitators or community organizations to collect and deliver completed and sealed ballots. The need to practice social distancing to prevent spread and consequently flatten the curve is dire; election boards should work with community organizations to comply with CDC guidelines to avoid large crowds.