Atlanta-Area Counties Still Processing 28K Voter Registration Forms
Fulton County has the largest backlog in the immediate metro Atlanta area, with 18,470 voter registration forms still waiting to be processed on Friday morning.
Kelly P. Kissel / Associated Press
About 28,631 people in Fulton, Cobb, DeKalb and Gwinnett counties might not know if they can vote in the upcoming midterm election.
That’s because elections officials are still processing those voter registration applications.
Helen Butler is executive director of the voting rights group, the Coalition for the Peoples’ Agenda, and said people who registered to vote may be discouraged from voting.
“If I can’t find myself in the system, but I know I’m registered, then I have to wait on a provisional ballot, which may or may not be cast — that would deter people,” Butler said. “They don’t know if they’re on the rolls. They don’t know whether they really should go vote.”
Fulton County has the largest backlog in the immediate metro Atlanta area, with 18,470 voter registration forms still waiting to be processed on Friday morning. The county said staff members are working overtime and on weekends to process them. Barron said he expects all of those voter registration forms to be processed by Monday, October 22.
“I understand that people would find this concerning but there are ways we have trained poll workers so no one gets turned away,” Barron said. “So it’s a little frustrating to have people outside the process thinking they think everything should be processed overnight. This happens every election.”
Gwinnett County had about 1,000 voter registration forms and said it expected to be finished processing all of the forms by the end of Friday. Cobb had more than 7,281 voter registration forms pending.
DeKalb County had about 1,880 forms still pending.
“In 2016, more than 25 percent of voters had cast their ballot by the end of the first week of early vote,” Gonzalez said in a press release. “If even 10% of these people try to vote during the first week, it’s likely that thousands of eligible Georgia voters are being turned away.”
Elections officials said people will still be able to vote with a provisional ballot, that will be processed after the election is over, if they are not found in the system. The deadline for counties to process voter registration forms is Oct. 26.
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