Georgia state leaders behind an update to the deadline for requesting absentee ballots are facing a new legal challenge originating with an arm of a union for theatrical workers, meaning personnel involved in live productions like theater showings and the production of movies and television.
Per the voting rights organization Democracy Docket, the newest deadline in Georgia for requesting absentee ballots is 11 days before an election — farther out from Election Day than what’s evidently mandated by the federal Voting Rights Act, which sets a deadline of a week before the election. (In other words, that’s the corresponding day of the preceding week.) “Since Georgia’s absentee ballot application cutoff is before the cutoff mandated by the VRA, the plaintiffs ask the court to block Georgia’s deadline and order that Georgia comply with the VRA’s prescribed deadline,” Democracy Docket says.
And the workers involved in this lawsuit also point to their often rapidly shifting work schedules, which could mean if Georgia’s rules stand that they won’t know in time that they’d even need to vote absentee to participate in a given election. This particular set of difficulties could provide the needed foundation, assuming it’s generally upheld in court, for this group — the International Alliance of Theater Stage Employees (IATSE) Local 927 — to proceed with its challenge in court.
As has been the case with essentially all of the most suppressive rules around elections promoted and imposed by Republicans in positions of power, there is no evidence that confirms some kind of widespread problem with the absentee balloting process that would force a change. Just recently, a series of lies about Georgia’s handling of its elections were put on the spot in a plea agreement involving formerly Trump-aligned attorney Jenna Ellis, whose deal outlines how allegations like more than 10,000 ballots cast in the names of deceased individuals in Georgia didn’t reflect the reality. State investigations found just a tiny handful of such ballots, which repeatedly traced to family members rather than any broad conspiracy.
