Fulton County accepting absentee ballots “relatively late” was not “really helpful because then people have to respond to that,” Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said Monday during a press conference on election integrity.
“And so, I think it caught some people unaware. So, I do think that having, you know, notice and making sure it's always timely, I think is always better, particularly when we live in a polarized society,” he added.
The Republican National Committee on Sunday filed a lawsuit after a state judge one day prior rejected allegations that Fulton County, which includes Atlanta, was violating Georgia’s election law over its extension.
“The county’s actions violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment by granting special privileges to voters of those counties in violation of state law, thus arbitrarily and disparately affecting against voters and candidates in other counties,” the lawsuit stated.
Other counties named are Cobb, DeKalb, Gwinnett and Clayton, Chatham and Athens-Clarke.
Raffensperger told reporters they will have to “just wait and let that work its way through the court system. But we'll follow the law. And that's what we always do.”
His office’s policy “has been we like to know what the rules are up front.”
“We'd like to have people have consistency, and Gwinnett County was receiving absentee ballots. They had people at their offices, but they had made that decision back in July. And Fulton was very relatively late.”
On the election process in general, Raffensperger said Georgia has “the cleanest voter list in the entire country.”
“We have photo ID for all forms of voting. At the end of the day, it's going to be fair and fast and accurate. I can’t control other people. I can control what we do and we’re going to do a great job,” he added.
Solange Reyner ✉
Solange Reyner is a writer and editor for Newsmax. She has more than 15 years in the journalism industry reporting and covering news, sports and politics.
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