The groups argued that power and internet outages, election office closures, and disruptions to the postal service are hindering registration efforts.
A request by voting rights groups in Georgia to reopen voter registration to counter disruptions caused by Hurricane Helene was rejected on Thursday by a federal judge.
The ruling came after voting groups filed a complaint on Tuesday, seeking to temporarily extend the voter registration period in the state which had closed last Monday.
U.S. District Judge Eleanor Ross found that voting rights organizations, including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)—which advocates for racial justice and the rights of black Americans—the Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda, and the New Georgia Project, had failed to sufficiently prove that their members would be harmed if the deadline was not extended for an additional week.
Ross also said that no state laws exist that would allow Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger—the defendants in the case—to order an extension of the voter registration deadline.
The groups argued that potential voters in Georgia had been unable to register before the deadline because of prolonged power and internet outages, election office closures, and disruptions to the postal service resulting from the storm.
Failing to extend the deadline would result in the disenfranchisement of Georgians impacted by the effects of the hurricane, including those in counties with disproportionately large populations of Black voters, the groups said.
“Residents in many counties across the state have faced, and continue to face, widespread flooding, damaged roadways, power outages, and internet outages, as well as suspended postal service and the closure of county boards of election offices,” the groups wrote in their filing with the court.
“Compounding these significant issues is the fact that Defendant Secretary of State is aware that the Secretary of State’s online voter registration platform has been inaccessible and/or experiencing persistent glitches today,” they added.
The groups said there had also been multiple reports of voters experiencing difficulty using the secretary of state’s online voter registration platform on the same day the filing with the court was made.
Historically, there’s a spike in Georgia voter registrations just before the deadline, they argued.
