Ga. absentee ballot mailings start April 21; drop boxes OK'd

The Georgia presidential and general primaries have been pushed back to June 9, but some absentee ballots that have been requested will start to be mailed back to voters next week.

The Georgia Secretary of State’s office has said the mailings will begin on April 21. The state’s estimated 6.9 million active voters were sent forms in the mail to request an absentee ballot.

Voters who wish to vote absentee must return their filled-out ballots by 7 p.m. on the primary date.

The broad absentee ballot access is just for the primaries for now, with a much higher return rate than usual expected due to safety and social distancing concerns over the Coronavirus.

Cobb voters over the age of 60 received two absentee ballot request forms, one from the county elections office and one from the state, due to an inadvertent overlap.

Cobb Elections said it mailed out absentee ballot applications to those older voters in late March, but its print vendor was late in fulfilling the order due to virus-related staffing shortages.

By the time those were sent out, the state mailed applications to all registered voters in Georgia regardless of age.

In a note on its website, Cobb Elections said both applications are valid, and voters 60 and older can fill out and return either of them to request an absentee ballot.

If you have not received an absentee ballot application, you can request one by clicking here and filling out the form.

The Cobb Elections office also said it is processing absentee voting applications in the order in which they are received. The preferred email to send in your application is absentee@cobbcounty.org.

More information can be found here on absentee balloting in Georgia at the Secretary of State’s website.

If you haven’t registered to vote, you now have until May 11 to do so, and can do that here.

On Wednesday the Georgia State Elections Board held an emergency meeting related to the delayed primaries and approved the use of drop boxes by county elections officials to handle returned absentee ballots.

The measure, which also is for the primary only, doesn’t require county elections offices to provide them, but offers some guidelines on how to set them up.

Cobb Elections is asking for a couple of other things while staff responds to so many absentee ballot requests.

One of them is patience. You’re asked not to call or e-mail to find out when your application was processed, and when you may get our absentee ballot. The office is updating its list of processed applications and making it public; a daily file of those forms can be found here.

Staff also is in need of homemade cloth masks. Starting May 4, Cobb Elections will be accepting masks at a donation bin at its main office at 736 Whitlock Ave. in Marietta. They’re seeking 1,400 masks to protect poll workers for the primaries.

If you’d like to help out, you can drop off masks in a plastic bag in the donation bin from 12-1 p.m. Monday-Friday.