Judge orders Chatham to extend voter registration after hurricane

A federal judge on Friday ordered Chatham County to reopen voter registration after voting rights advocates argued that Hurricane Matthew prevented would-be voters from signing up for ballots.

County residents may now register to vote through Tuesday.

U.S. District Judge William Moore wrote that while he has “significant reservations concerning the ultimate merits of Plaintiff’s claims,” the benefits of ensuring anyone who wanted to register to vote has the chance is more important.

"An individual's ability to participate in local and national elections is arguably the most cherished right enshrined in our Constitution," Moore wrote in his order hours after a hearing Friday morning. "Indeed, our founding fathers felt so strongly about their right to participate in the electoral process that when deprived of it they took up arms against their sovereign, risking life and home for over eight years, to obtain that right."

A spokeswoman for Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp said he has instructed Chatham County officials to comply with Moore’s order.

Voter advocates filed the suit just before midnight Wednesday, arguing that an emergency extension of the registration deadline was needed because some coastal residents forced to flee Hurricane Matthew last weekend did not have enough opportunity to submit applications. More than 100,000 residents in parts of Chatham, Bryan, Camden, Glynn, Liberty and McIntosh counties were ordered to evacuate ahead of the storm. Gov. Nathan Deal urged an additional 400,000 in low-lying areas to follow suit.

Local government offices were closed in Chatham for what would have been the last six days of the voter registration period that ended Tuesday. State officials, including Kemp, said residents in the affected areas had many other ways to register, including online.

The complaint, which named both Kemp and Deal as defendants, alleged that by failing to extend the deadline, the state violated residents’ constitutional right to vote as well as provisions of the National Voter Registration Act that require states to receive and process voter registration forms 30 days prior to Election Day.

The Georgia NAACP, the Georgia Coalition for the Peoples’ Agenda and the New Georgia Project brought the suit, with help from the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under the Law. The groups all said in the suit that the storm and related office closures forced them to cancel or curtail planned registration efforts in Chatham that otherwise could have resulted in people joining the voter rolls.

“The right to vote is the most important in our democracy,” said Kristen Clarke, the executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under the Law. “Would-be voters in Chatham County were denied a full and fair opportunity to register to vote in the wake of Hurricane Matthew. Today’s decision extending the voter registration deadline helps ensure that eligible voters will be able to participate this election cycle.

Kemp last week noted a number of election registration offices had closed in coastal counties, and that the hurricane may delay mail service in some areas, potentially also delaying processing of paper voter registration applications. But he also did not offer to extend the registration deadline.

A judge also ordered North Carolina on Friday to extend the voter registration deadline in 36 counties because of the hurricane.

In Florida, where a mandatory evacuation order forced more than 1.5 million residents to flee the hurricane, a federal judge on Wednesday ordered the state to extend its voter registration deadline by a week, to this coming Tuesday.

In anticipation of the storm, South Carolina voluntarily extended its original registration deadline to this week.