A ruling by the Georgia Court of Appeals Monday means counties can offer early voting in next Saturday’s US Senate runoff between Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock and Republican Herschel Walker.
The appeals court denied a state motion to stay a lower court’s decision that said state law permitted early voting that day.
Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger had told county election officials that early voting couldn’t take place that day because state law says it’s illegal on a Saturday if the preceding Thursday or Friday is a holiday.
Warnock’s campaign, along with the Democratic Party of Georgia and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, sued last week to challenge that leadership.
Thursday is Thanksgiving and Friday is a national holiday. The Saturday after those two public holidays is the only chance to vote between Warnock and Walker on the Saturday before next month’s Senate runoff.
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Thomas Cox issued an order Friday that sided with the Warnock campaign and Democratic groups. He noted that the law cited by the state about voting on Saturday after a holiday does not apply to a runoff.
Prosecutors appealed Monday to the Georgia Court of Appeals. They asked the court to suspend the lower court’s verdict immediately.
They argued in a court filing that the verdict was flawed on procedural grounds, but also that Cox wrongly viewed the runoff as a separate type of election rather than a continuation of the general election.
The Georgia Court of Appeals Monday declined in a single sentence to stay the lower court’s verdict.
It’s not clear how many counties will open polling stations to vote on Saturday.
Warnock and Walker, a former football player, were forced into a runoff on Dec. 6 because neither won a majority in that month’s midterm election.
Georgia’s 2021 election law has compressed the period between the general election and the runoff to four weeks, and Thanksgiving falls in the middle. Many Georgians will be offered early in-person voting for just five days a week starting November 28.
