Politics

Elections officials deploy across Georgia so voters can cure their ballots

ATLANTA — Georgia is one of 18 states that gives voters whose ballot was rejected a chance to fix it and have it count. The deadline to cure ballots was 5 p.m. Friday.

Channel 2′s Wendy Corona learned that tracking down voters who had issues with their ballots is time-consuming work.

Election workers had to drive to each person’s home, tell the voter there was an issue with their ballot and give them steps to take to fix it.

Channel 2 Action News will have live streaming election coverage throughout the evening as votes continue to be counted. Download the WSB Now app on your Roku, Amazon Fire or Apple TV to watch LIVE.

Corona met with one of those teams of election workers who said they felt it was their civic duty to help everyone’s vote count.

“Across the board, everybody was so thankful that somebody came to let them know and gave them a solution,” volunteer Sharena Hall said. “I had about 19 people on my list yesterday.”

Ten of those got cured and counted.

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“It’s a tiny little drop in the bucket, but if you have a couple of hundred people around the state doing this, it adds up to a lot, especially in a tight race,” Hall said.

Georgia is one of 18 states that allows ballot curing, but most people don’t even know their ballot got rejected until they get a knock at the door.

Hall showed Corona an app on her phone that directed them to addresses of rejected ballots. The first stop Friday was a home in Roswell.

“She’s got the paperwork, and she’s going to get it handled before five o’clock and make sure his vote gets in,” Hall said.

Ballots can be rejected for not having a signature or if the signature doesn’t match the name on the ballot. What matters is that it can be fixed.

“I’m so grateful to everyone that’s going door to door trying to help,” one voter said. “I think everyone will be happy when it’s over and we know who our new leader is.”

With this kind of slim margin in Georgia and other states, it’s no surprise they felt this work was very necessary.