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DeKalb needs early voting sites — and a way to contact officials

There’s a continued push to get adequate early voting sites in DeKalb County for the Congressional District 6 special election run-off, now a race between Jon Ossoff and Karen Handel.

Right now, there is only one early voting site inside the district, limiting access for many voters.

On May 11, the DeKalb County Board of Registration and Elections will hold a public meeting, where they will make their final decision about opening an additional site in the Eastern portion of the district.

And, it turns out, if citizens want to voice their opinions about this the only way to do that is at 4:30 p.m. on May 11 in their office tucked between Avondale Estate and Clarkston, during their monthly meeting. This public body has no other way to contact the public officials who make up the board. No email addresses or phone numbers are listed on their website.

If it’s not convenient for you to be at that meeting — at 4:30 p.m. on a work day — you cannot register your concerns with this public body.

Georgia officials should consider advising other states on how to evade transparency, accountability and accessibility — it seems officials here excel at this.

In addition to deciding if they will open an additional early voting site to serve residents, the DeKalb County Board of Registration and Elections is also dealing with a lawsuit from voter’s rights groups around the possibly illegal voter registration deadline.

As fellow blogger Shelby Steuart succinctly explained:

Although federal law states the registration deadline cannot be set more than 30 days before any election, according to Georgia law, anyone who has not already registered will not be allowed to between now and the runoff election.

During last month’s meeting, the Board went into an executive session to discuss the lawsuit with their legal counsel. At this point it’s unclear how the lawsuit will resolve, the parties will go before the judge for the first hearing later this week. However, Secretary of State Brian Kemp has already gone on the defensive, deriding it as “completely political effort to attack Secretary Kemp.”

Because there’s no real reason folks would be worried about voting rights in this state.

With so much at stake right now, the DeKalb County Board of Registration and Elections needs to be open and accessible to voters as they weigh important policy decisions in advance of the June 20 special election runoff.

Call the DeKalb County elections office at 404-298-4020 or email them at [email protected] and tell them to open more accessible early voting sites in DeKalb County.

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