About 2,900 absentee voters in Georgia’s Cobb County are still waiting on their ballots, and a lawsuit filed Tuesday blames a vendor the county hired from out of state, Democracy Docket reported.
A Cobb County voter, suing for himself and others in the same position, wants a judge to order the election board to send ballots by overnight delivery so affected voters can return them by the Nov. 3 deadline. The complaint says the board contracted New York-based Fort Orange Press to handle its absentee ballots.
According to the suit, voters who requested ballots from Oct. 6 through Oct. 15 haven’t received them, even though the state’s voter website shows them as sent. Georgia law gives counties three days to issue ballots during early voting.
Using state data, the complaint says fewer than 14 percent of Cobb’s absentee ballots have come back, versus 44 percent in Fulton, 71 percent in Paulding and 50 percent statewide. Cobb’s rate at this point was 32 percent in 2024 and 56 percent in 2022. Gwinnett (12.5 percent) and DeKalb (8 percent) are also low, and both use the same vendor, which Democracy Docket says also managed ballots in counties with delivery problems in Pennsylvania, Colorado and New York.
The suit argues the likeliest cause is “a breakdown in the out-of-state private vendor’s ability to deliver ballots.”
Cobb is a Democratic stronghold where former Vice President Kamala Harris won 57 percent in 2024, and Georgia has a pivotal Senate and gubernatorial race in less than a week. Elias Law Group, founded by Democracy Docket’s founder Marc Elias, represents the plaintiff.