The May 19 Georgia primary election has been delayed due to the Coronavirus crisis.
Secretary of State Brad Raffensparger announced Thursday that the presidential and general primaries will now take place on June 9.
His decision came the day after Gov. Brian Kemp extended the statewide shelter-in-place order through April 30, and a public health emergency until May 13.
“This decision allows our office and county election officials to continue to put in place contingency plans to ensure that voting can be safe and secure when in-person voting begins and prioritizes the health and safety of voters, county election officials, and poll workers,” Raffensparger said.
He had resisted calls from Georgia House Speaker Dennis Ralston and others to delay the elections due to the statewide response to COVID-19, which has claimed 370 lives and infected more than 10,000 people in the state.
The Georgia delay also comes two days after the Wisconsin primary took place following a legal battle in which the state’s Supreme Court overturned the governor’s attempt to postpone voting.
There were poll worker shortages reported and many polling places were closed and consolidated. Citizens showed up at polls waiting in long lines, not able to observe social distancing guidelines, to cast their ballots.
In his announcement Thursday, Raffensparger said there were concerns from county elections officials in southwest Georgia that they “could not overcome the challenges brought on by COVID-19 in time for in-person voting to begin on April 27.”
The Albany area and surrounding counties have been hard-hit by COVID-19, with a state-high 62 deaths reported in Dougherty County.
April 27 is the date early voting was to have begun, and it falls around the time a leading COVID-19 forecasting project is predicting the virus will reach its peak in Georgia.
The voter registration deadline has been pushed back to May 11, and early voting will take place on May 18.
Raffensparger had mailed out an absentee ballot application to all registered voters in Georgia, and the number of requests has overwhelmed county elections officials.
That includes Cobb Elections, which this week notified county voters that the Secretary of State’s vendor had not yet started mailing out absentee ballots.
According to Raffensparger, absentee ballot applications “will continue to be accepted and processed by counties even if the application said May 19. Once county election officials properly verify the signature on the application, the voter will be sent an absentee ballot for the primary election now to be held on June 9.”
More information on absentee ballots can be found here.
The general primary includes voting for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by David Perdue, Congressional races, state legislative races, county commission contests, school board campaigns and judicial seats.
Any runoffs will now take place on Aug. 11.
The race for the U.S. Senate seat held by Kelly Loeffler will be a “jungle primary” held during the Nov. 3 general election.
The presidential preference primary had been moved to May 19 from its original date of March 24, but there won’t be anything unresolved on the ballot.
President Donald Trump is the only Republican candidate on the ballot, and former vice president Joe Biden is the presumptive Democratic nominee after Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders suspended his campaign this week.
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