Another Georgia county is sued after 1,800 voters don’t receive mail ballots

Nearly 10,000 voters across three of Georgia’s most populous and diverse counties have experienced absentee ballot delays and are in danger of disenfranchisement close to Election Day, civil rights organizations said in a lawsuit against one of the counties. 

In a complaint filed Friday on behalf of a voter, the ACLU of Georgia, the Legal Defense Fund (LDF) and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) said that more than 1,800 voters in Gwinnett County still have not received their absentee ballots, despite properly applying to receive them by mail. They are calling on the Gwinnett County Board of Registrations and Elections to immediately overnight ballots to the impacted voters.

Voters in Cobb and DeKalb counties have faced similar delays. Together, the three counties account for a critical mass of Democrats and voters of color across metro Atlanta, in a battleground state where the governor and U.S. Senate races are two of the most closely watched contests in the midterms. 

Georgia is also a state where President Donald Trump has frequently alleged voting fraud and has tried to undermine elections.

“Absentee voters in Gwinnett, through no fault of their own, face the imminent loss of their right to vote in the 2026 general election,” ACLU of Georgia staff attorney Raneem Ashrawi said in a press release. “Folks should be able to count on their government to do the bare minimum the law requires: Mail absentee ballots on time.”

A similar lawsuit against Cobb County attributed the delays to a New York-based print company called Fort Orange Press, which is also contracted to manage Gwinnett and DeKalb counties’ mail ballots. Cobb County has since agreed to overnight ballots to the affected voters.

Fort Orange Press is also the vendor for several other counties in Colorado, Pennsylvania and New York that have complained about voters not receiving ballots. 

“We have no reason to believe the delays are the fault of the counties at all,” Georgia Democratic Party Chairman Charlie Bailey told the Gwinnett Daily Post. “The information we have indicates that the counties did their job processing the ballot applications and getting those to the vendor that handles the mailing of the ballots.”

Fort Orange Press has not yet responded to Democracy Docket’s request for comment. 

A Gwinnett County voter sued on behalf of himself and 1,819 other voters who applied for absentee ballots on or after Oct. 6. By law, voters are supposed to receive the ballots from the county within three days when they apply during early voting, which began Oct. 13. All mail ballots must be received by the end of Election Day to be counted.

The problem is particularly acute for voters temporarily residing outside their home counties or those who cannot readily vote in person. Georgia has seen record in-person early voting turnout this year amid concerns about mail voting. 

According to the legal complaint, return rates for absentee ballots issued between Oct. 6 and Oct. 16 in the three affected counties lagged dramatically behind the statewide average of 67.1%, at the time of the complaint’s filing. In Gwinnett, only 28.3% of mail ballots had been returned as of the filing. 

According to data from the Georgia Secretary of State’s voter turnout portal, nearly 23,000 absentee ballots have been issued but not yet returned across Gwinnett, Cobb and DeKalb counties.

An update on the absentee ballot delays on the Gwinnett election board’s website states that those without ballots should request them by contacting the office or going to vote in person. 

The lawsuit is asking the court for an injunction to have the county notify affected voters by phone or email and then immediately send ballots to them overnight. It requested a deadline of Oct. 31 at 1 p.m. to express-mail those ballots. 

“Gwinnett County has a responsibility to voters but has refused so far to take all reasonable steps to rectify a known delay with absentee ballots,” Legal Defense Fund senior counsel Pilar Whitaker said in a public statement. “Eligible voters in the county are on the brink of being disenfranchised at a time when the right to vote has already endured attacks on all sides.”