Georgia
ACLU of Georgia and All Voting Is Local Georgia Urge Sec of State, State Election Board to Adopt a Commonsense Drop Box Strategy for August and November Elections
ATLANTA – Today, the ACLU of Georgia, All Voting Is Local Georgia, and 23 community organizations sent a letter to the Secretary of State and State Election Board urging them to mandate and fund a four-pronged commonsense strategy for placing drop boxes in all 159 counties. The emergence of COVID-19 added to the decline in in-person voting sites since 2013 make drop boxes vital to ensure that all Georgia citizens can be safe as they exercise their sacred right to vote.
Georgia Officials Could Punish Voters with Senate Bill 463
ATLANTA — Aklima Khondoker, Georgia State Director of All Voting is Local, issued the following statement in response to Georgia legislators’ rush to advance SB 463, which would ban state election officials from mailing absentee ballot applications to eligible voters, threatening to silence them. The bill only aims to further restrict access to the ballot on the heels of Georgia’s catastrophic primary election on June 9 and could pass as early as tomorrow.
CBS News: “Catastrophe:” Elections experts fear what primary mayhem may mean for November
Aklima Khondoker, Georgia state director for the advocacy group All Voting is Local, said her organization is pushing for more drop boxes, where voters can return absentee ballots without postage and without coming into physical contact with another person. "In this COVID time, people want to have safe and available and free mechanisms for them to cast their ballots," she said.
Business Insider: Georgia’s primary elections quickly descended into chaos, with voting-machine problems, a lack of paper ballots, and hours-long lines at polling places
Ayele Ajavon, a spokeswoman for the advocacy group All Voting Is Local, told Insider that the group's volunteers in Georgia received reports of precincts where all the machines malfunctioned or poll workers weren't trained how to work them, of lines with over 100 people before polls even opened, and of some voters not being offered backup provisional ballots.
Georgia Officials Must Remove Voting Obstacles, Protect Voters on Tuesday
ATLANTA— All Voting is Local Georgia State Director Aklima Khondoker issued the following statement in response to reports of unnecessary obstacles voters faced on Friday, the last day of early voting in Georgia, including: waits of up to seven hours to cast a ballot, polling place closures, and a backlog of absentee ballot applications. Khondoker urged Georgia officials to act now to prevent such problems in the Tuesday, June 9 primary
Georgia Policymakers Are Prioritizing Partisan Politics Over Democracy During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Aklima Khondoker, Georgia State Director of All Voting is Local, issued the following statement in response to Georgia House Speaker David Ralston’s statements regarding Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s proposal to mail absentee ballot request forms to all voters in the state.