Federal lawsuit seeks another delay in Georgia primary elections

Georgia’s postponed primary election has drawn a federal lawsuit that seeks another delay to the end of June.

The suit, filed by a group of voters and advocates often at odds with Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, also calls for his office to take several sanitation and security steps, including shelving a key component of the state’s new voting machines.

The Coalition for Good Governance is seeking to delay the June 9 primary until June 30 in the face of coronavirus, which has sickened thousands of Georgians and killed hundreds since last month.

The suit also asks the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia to force the state to scrap its new touchscreens for the primary in favor of all-paper ballots, which opponents of the new machines have sought in prior litigation.

The touchscreens, which figure as a critical part of the state’s 30,000 new ballot-marking devices, cannot be scrubbed and sanitized thoroughly enough to ensure the virus will not spread when voters use the screens to cast their ballots, the suit argues.

“The coronavirus will survive on the surfaces of touchscreen [devices] for days,” the suit says, “and using the [devices] for in-person voting will obviously enable the transmission of the COVID-19 virus.”

Additionally, the suit calls for the state to reimburse counties for providing Georgia’s roughly 8,000 poll workers with protective masks and gloves on Election Day and during early voting, and to expand several provisions for voting precincts to accept absentee ballots.

The 85-page complaint argues state elections officials are not prepared to hold the primary on June 9, even as Raffensperger’s office ramps up mail-in voting options amid the coronavirus scare.

“Unless in-person voting is carefully planned, regulated, and diligently managed, and unless significant changes are made to how people vote in Georgia, voting in Georgia will remain dangerous to voters and poll workers for the foreseeable future,” the suit says.

In a statement, Raffensperger dismissed the coalition’s claims and attributed the suit largely to political motives, particularly the push by many election advocates for all-paper ballots in Georgia.

“Groups across the country are disingenuously using a crisis to push their failed policies through the court system,” Raffensperger said. “For the liberals, it’s eliminating options for voters and moving to vote by mail.”

The Colorado-based coalition has clashed in the past with Raffensperger in court over the new machines, which opponents argue do not provide enough of a paper trail to guarantee voting integrity.