Zeta impacts early voting in metro Atlanta

ATLANTA - Tropical Storm Zeta roared through metro Atlanta leaving some early voting polling locations without power on Thursday.

Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said the overnight storm impacted 15 counties where early voting sites were supposed to open on Thursday morning.

"I talk to Georgia Power this morning, we gave them our list of 336 voting sites. I can tell you right now 15 counties are opening late and three counties have power outages with a least one voting site with no power. I can tell you that Douglas County, all six locations have no power and their county courthouse," the state election official reported.

Raffensperger said he did not think the outages would impact voting long term because Friday would be another opportunity, as well as Tuesday.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia immediately called on the counties to leave the polls open later Thursday evening.

"Due to the weather, polls opened late. The right to vote is sacred, and voting hours should be extended so that people can have a full 12 hours of voting today as was originally scheduled,” said Andrea Young, executive director of the ACLU of Georgia.

FOX 5 contacted Cobb, Douglas, and Fulton counties. All three indicated they would not remain open late.

“As of 3:15 p.m. we are continuing to try and reopen our other early advance locations but are unable to do so because power to those facilities have not been restored yet,” said Milton Kidd, Director of Elections and Voter Registration.  On Friday, October 30, 2020, the last day of early voting, we will have two additional locations, Church at Chapel Hill and Atlanta West Pentecostal open at 12 noon until 6 p.m.

The ACLU is contemplating whether it will take additional action on the issue.