Some voters in Fulton County are receiving absentee ballots with envelopes that lack a mailing address for them to be returned.
The space for the address of the county elections office is blank. Voters would have to fill in the address of the Fulton elections office themselves. Otherwise, the U.S. Postal Service wouldn’t be able to deliver their ballots.
It’s unknown how many voters are affected by the issue. So far, nearly 42,000 Fulton voters have been mailed absentee ballots for the Aug. 11 runoff.
Doug Shipman, a voter in Fulton County, said he noticed the missing address information on his wife’s absentee ballot just before dropping it in the mail Monday.
“People might not notice and end up doing what I was about to do, which is put it in the mail before it would go any place,” said Shipman, the president and CEO for the Woodruff Arts Center. “I worry people won’t end up voting because they’d have to go through another step, either contacting Fulton or finding the address.”
The problem occurred on absentee ballot envelopes printed by Fulton’s elections office, according to the Georgia secretary of state’s office.
Fulton spokeswoman Jessica Corbitt-Dominguez said election officials believe “no more than a handful” of envelopes without addresses were sent to voters.
The envelope printing problem comes after a primary election when many voters said their absentee ballot applications were never processed and in-person voters had to wait in hours-long lines at some polling places.
In addition, 688 absentee voters in Fulton were mailed the wrong runoff ballots this month, receiving nonpartisan ballots instead of the Democratic Party ballots they had requested. Those voters have been sent replacement ballots.
“Ensuring that a return address is on an envelope is basic. Hopefully they can remedy this mistake quickly,” Deputy Secretary of State Jordan Fuchs said. “This is yet another indication that Fulton County is holding its voters back by fumbling the most basic of elections administration tasks.”
Fulton Commission Chairman Robb Pitts has said he is disappointed by the continued criticism from state officials, calling it “unnecessary and counterproductive.”
Fulton voters are deciding on several races in the runoff election, including contests for district attorney, sheriff and superior court. Absentee ballots will be counted if they’re received by election officials by 7 p.m. on election day Aug. 11.
Voters who receive absentee ballots with missing address information can deliver them to a ballot drop box or write in the address:
Fulton County Registration and Elections
Absentee Ballot Unit
130 Peachtree St. SW, Suite 2186
Atlanta, GA 30303-3443
Credit: AJC
