The Republican National Committee and the Georgia Republican Party have sued Fulton and Gwinnett counties, alleging county election boards set up unauthorized ways to collect absentee ballots that conflict with state law; the suits claim these practices bypassed rules passed after 2020 and stripped away required safeguards like sworn collection teams, signed transfer forms, and poll-watcher access.
The RNC and state Republicans say Georgia law allows only three methods to return absentee ballots: by mail, hand delivery to the registrar or absentee ballot clerk, or through an authorized drop box. They argue Fulton and Gwinnett adopted procedures that do not fit any of those categories and therefore exceed the authority of unelected local officials.
“Georgia legislators are responsible for making the state’s election laws, not unelected bureaucrats,” RNC Chairman Joe Gruters said.
“County election boards cannot rewrite those rules by creating unauthorized drop-off locations or weakening safeguards. The RNC is fighting to protect election integrity and ensure the law is enforced.”
The suits point to the sweeping rewrite of Georgia election code after the 2020 cycle, which included explicit rules on drop-box handling, chain-of-custody, ballot transfers, and poll-watcher access. Those statutory changes were designed to standardize processes statewide and to ensure transparency and accountability in absentee voting operations.
In Gwinnett, board members adopted a policy in February 2024 letting voters hand absentee ballots to poll managers at locations that had no official drop boxes. Under that plan ballots were stamped, placed in a “secured ballot bag,” and moved later to the registrar without the sworn two-person collection teams, signed transfer forms, or on-the-spot verification that state law requires.
State code requires drop-box ballots be collected by a sworn two-person team with signed transfer forms and verified counts, and Gwinnett is capped at five authorized drop boxes under the statute. The complaint says Gwinnett had already established six drop locations and then layered in unsecured ballot bags that lack the mandated safeguards.
Fulton County went further in April 2026 by labeling poll managers and assistant managers at 22 polling places “deputy registrars” and instructing voters to hand ballots to those workers. Ballots received a label on the envelope and were dropped into what county officials called “ABM ballot containers” for later transport to an elections hub.
The lawsuit says the containers are “an attempt by the Fulton County BOE to make an end-run around Georgia law . . . by renaming ABM ballot drop boxes as ‘ABM ballot containers.'”
Fulton is permitted seven drop boxes by law and had already reached that limit when these 22 containers were approved. The policy also kept such containers open through Election Day, even though state law requires drop boxes to close when advance voting ends the Friday before the election.
Both county policies, the lawsuits say, explicitly block Republican poll watchers from observing ballot handoffs, which undermines the oversight the legislature put into law. Once ballots without the required chain-of-custody markings are mixed with properly processed ballots, the suits argue there is no reliable way to separate or verify them later.
These protests are not new. The RNC previously sued Fulton, Cobb, DeKalb, and Gwinnett in November 2024 over similar concerns about unauthorized ballot handling. The current filings expand that effort, asking courts to enforce the clear statutory limits and to restore the procedural protections the state adopted after 2020.
The legal filings name specific county board members responsible for the contested policies and highlight the procedural details that allegedly violate statute: the absence of sworn collection teams, the lack of signed transfer forms, the failure to verify counts at the registrar upon receipt, and the creation of more drop-style collection points than the law allows.
From a Republican perspective, the suits stress that election rules belong to the legislature and should apply uniformly. The complaint frames the county actions as local officials rewriting statewide law through policies that expand ballot collection options and reduce transparency at critical steps of handling absentee ballots.
The courts will now weigh whether Fulton and Gwinnett counties exceeded their authority and whether those policies must be halted or corrected to align with state law. For Republicans pushing stricter election standards, a favorable ruling would reinforce legislative primacy and force counties to stick to the three authorized ballot-return methods.
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