The last batch of absentee ballots mailed back to Cobb County arrived with just minutes to spare.
A U.S. Postal Service worker pulled into the elections office parking lot near the Big Chicken in Marietta just moments before a 7 p.m. deadline for ballots to arrive. Another rushed into the office with a container of express mail envelopes at 6:55 p.m. Another USPS vehicle had pulled away from the office just moments earlier.
The postal service said it took “extraordinary measures” to get delayed absentee ballots from Cobb County to voters and back. The county said it sent more than 3,000 ballots at the end of last week with expedited service after it struggled to fulfill a late rush of absentee applications, and it gave voters prepaid express postage labels. The county blamed the delay on malfunctioning equipment.
Under state law, ballots must be received by 7 p.m. Election Day to count.
The USPS received 2,249 of those ballots Friday and Saturday, the agency said in a statement to the AJC, and it bypassed its normal system to deliver them. The Postal Service said it delivered the “overwhelming majority” of the ballots it received Friday same-day, and “most” ballots received Saturday. (The county sent others via UPS, which did not answer specific questions about the Cobb County ballots.)
All told, the post office said 98% of the late-arriving ballots made it to voters by Monday. But getting them back was its own challenge, and the post office said it bypassed its system again to expedite their delivery back to the elections office.
A Cobb County judge initially issued an order allowing the elections office to count ballots received through the end of the day Tuesday, but the Georgia Supreme Court reversed that order, instructing the county to set aside those ballots to allow the courts to decide how to proceed.
Right at 7 p.m., election workers cheered as they called out the time, and they taped up a sign stating they were “NO LONGER ACCEPTING ABSENTEE BALLOTS.” Inside the office reception area, a bin was set out for “affected ballots.”
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