Some Fulton absentee ballots sent late

Ashley Anderson’s absentee ballot for the Nov. 4

general election arrived at her Roswell home on Election Day.

Too bad she was 119 miles away in class at Auburn University.

“I was upset,” said the 23-year-old graduate school student, who believes late delivery of her absentee ballot cost her a chance to vote. “I really wanted to vote.”

Anderson was among as many as 2,500 would-be Fulton County voters who received their absentee ballots at the last minute — in some cases, possibly too late to vote.

A Oct. 31 letter from Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel to Fulton’s interim election director April Pye criticized the county’s election officials for failing to process and respond to applications for absentee ballots in a timely fashion.

“Approximately 100 [ballot applications] have been in your office for at least 10 days,” Handel’s letter said.

On Saturday, a member of the Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections acknowledged the faux pas.

“It’s not acceptable,” said board member Harry MacDougald. “People who made timely applications should’ve gotten their ballots in a timely manner.”

Handel demanded that absentee ballots that had been held in the Fulton election up to Oct. 31 be overnight-delivered to anxious voters.

MacDougald said some ballots were sent out by the costly Federal Express overnight shipping as late as Monday, the day before the election.

Adam Montgomery of Milton sought to dodge long advance voting lines by voting absentee. Montgomery and his wife Julie faxed their applications to Fulton County a week in advance, but FedEx delivered her application the Sunday morning before Election Day and his a day later.

“I rushed to the post office that Monday and paid $13 to have it express-mailed overnight,” he said.

In an e-mailed statement Sunday, Handel spokesman Matt Carrothers said the secretary of state’s Office of Inspector General “will continue its investigation into all facets of Fulton County’s election administration.”

The inquiry is not limited in scope, Carrothers said, and if the probers uncover actions “beyond the initial basis for the investigation, they may look into these as well.” Findings will be presented to the state election board, but not before the Dec. 2 runoff, he said.

Although MacDougald called what he described as a backlog of absentee ballot applications inexcusable, he described the factors that contributed.

“We had a record number of voter registration applications that choked the process in the registration division [that also sends out absentee ballots],” MacDougald said.

He said advanced voting pulled an unexpected number of staffers from the task of processing absentee applications. As a result, scant numbers were left to complete a very labor-intensive procedure to process the ballot applications, MacDougald said.

Handel spokesman Carrothers hinted the county could be fined heavily for both the tabulating infractions and the late ballot mailings.

“Since Karen Handel came into office [in 2007], the State Election Board has levied more than $100,000 in fines for not managing the election process properly,” Carrothers said.

MacDougald disputes the Secretary of State’s assertion that any laws were broken when election workers went home early.

“There’s no law that says we have to keep people working around the clock,” he said of workers who had logged more than 20 hours on Election Day. “We got the tabulating done on time.”

That is, the ballot counting was completed within the seven-day deadline by which Handel certified the votes.

Fulton election officials didn’t process any applications received on or after Oct. 31, MacDougald said.

Anderson, the Auburn grad student, mailed off her absentee application early, but didn’t request the ballot be sent to her campus address in Alabama.

Had it arrived there Election Day, it still likely would have been too late, she said.

A meeting of the county Board of Registration and Elections will be held at 2 p.m. Monday on the fourth floor of the County building, 141 Pryor St., in Conference Room 4056.