Democrats have sued the Georgia Secretary of State to ensure that the state government takes action to shorten lines at polling stations on Election Day, giving all voters an equal opportunity to cast their ballots, the Associated Press reports.
The Democratic Party of Georgia, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and three Georgia voters filed suit against Georgia’s Secretary of State, republican Brad Raffensperger “to remedy the fundamentally unreasonable conditions that have led, repeatedly, to unconstitutional burdens on countless Georgia voters,” according to the lawsuit.
Voters in Georgia endured long lines during the June primary which caused some people to stand in lines for hours, which effectively disenfranchised some voters who were either turned away at the polls or unable to stay in line to vote.
One of the individual plaintiffs in the suit is a Latina woman from Fulton County who attempted to vote via absentee ballot, but she did not receive one. She stood in line on the day of the primary to vote, causing her to miss work.
Another is a 71-year-old Black woman from Fulton County who went to the polls three times on primary day, only to see the long lines that she knew she could not physically stand in for the hours required to vote.
“At the end of the day, what matters to us is that voters are not negatively impacted at any level of the electoral process,” state Sen. Nikema Williams, chair of the state Democratic Party, told reporters Thursday.