### Georgia Judge Dismisses GOP Effort to Halt Weekend Absentee Ballot Drop-offs

A Georgia judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by Republicans seeking to bar counties from opening election offices on Saturday and Sunday for in-person absentee ballot returns. This decision specifically impacted Fulton County—home to Atlanta and 11% of the state's voters—but also extended to at least five other counties with Democratic-leaning electorates that planned to operate over the weekend.

The lawsuit, submitted late Friday, referenced a Georgia law stating that ballot drop boxes must close after the end of advance voting, which concluded on Friday. However, state law simultaneously allows voters to hand-deliver absentee ballots to county election offices until the polls close at 7 p.m. on Election Day. Despite clear legislative wording, lawyer Alex Kaufman contended during an emergency hearing on Saturday that hand-delivering absentee ballots should not be permissible outside of Election Day, though he conceded that ballots arriving by mail in the same time frame were acceptable. For years, Georgia election offices have routinely accepted mail ballots over the counter.

Judge Farmer concluded that voters are within their rights to hand-return their absentee ballots and that doing so does not violate the cited code sections.

The Republican scrutiny on Fulton County has intensified since former President Donald Trump wrongly accused county officials of electoral fraud in Georgia's 2020 presidential election. State GOP chair Josh McKoon claimed Democratic-dominated counties were "illegally accepting ballots," triggering a surge of online debate among Republican activists.

Tensions further flared when Fulton County’s elections director, Nadine Williams, stated that election observers would not be allowed inside the offices during ballot drop-offs—a stipulation she later clarified by allowing public access without credentials. Additionally, members of an independent monitoring team and state investigators were reported to be onsite.

As of late Saturday afternoon, Fulton County spokesperson Jessica Corbitt-Dominguez confirmed that 105 absentee ballots were handed in across four designated locations.