Cobb County Voter Sues Over Delayed Mail Ballots From Vendor

Nearly 2,900 voters in a major Georgia county are staring down an immovable deadline with no ballots in their hands, pinning the blame on an out-of-state printing vendor hired by local officials. In a lawsuit filed on Tuesday, a Cobb County voter represented by the Elias Law Group asks a judge to force the local election board to overnight absentee ballots immediately, democracydocket.com reported.

Time is running out fast. With the November 3 deadline for returning votes rapidly approaching, the complaint argues that these residents face complete disenfranchisement through no fault of their own. Thousands of people applied for their mail-in packets weeks ago, following every rule, only to find themselves completely cut off from the voting apparatus.

The Vendor Breakdown and Statewide Contrast

At the center of the dispute is Fort Orange Press, a New York-based printing and mail management vendor hired by the Cobb County election board. According to the court filing, voters who submitted their applications between October 6 and October 15 still have not received their packets, even though the state voter website lists them as officially issued.

The operational friction shows up clearly in the return numbers. Cobb County currently sits at an anemic absentee return rate of less than 14 percent. That figure lags far behind neighboring Fulton County at 44 percent and nearby Paulding County at 71 percent. Across the entire state of Georgia, the return rate hovers at 50 percent, according to voting data cited in the complaint.

Cobb’s current pace also falls dramatically short of its own historical benchmarks. At this exact point in the 2024 cycle, the county had already seen a 32 percent return rate, while the 2022 midterm cycle reached 56 percent.

Metro Atlanta Counties Face Similar Delays

Cobb County is not suffering alone. Two other core Metro Atlanta counties, Gwinnett and DeKalb, are recording severely depressed return rates as well. In Gwinnett County, only 12.5 percent of absentee ballots have made it back, while DeKalb County sits at just 8 percent.

Both Gwinnett and DeKalb also contracted with Fort Orange Press to handle their mail-in ballot operations. The same vendor previously managed mail ballots in counties that ran into severe delivery snags in Pennsylvania, Colorado, and New York.

“The only plausible explanation is a breakdown in the out-of-state private vendor’s ability to deliver ballots to voters in a timely fashion in accordance with state law,” the complaint reads.

Under Georgia law during early voting periods, the county must issue ballots, rejections, or provisional notices within three days of an application. Instead, the lawsuit contends that a systemic breakdown in the mail-delivery apparatus has left roughly 2,900 voters waiting for documents that might never arrive in time to meet the state-mandated deadline.