O.C.G.A.

O.C.G.A. § 21-2-573 (2019)

Absentee voting by unqualified elector

✓ O.C.G.A. — 2019 edition (Public.Resource.Org Release 73)

Code text and O.C.G.A. statutory annotations on this page reflect the 2019 Official Code of Georgia Annotated (Public.Resource.Org Release 73, 2019-08-21; public domain per Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, 2020). The Syfert case-law annotations in Notes of Decisions, below, are current.

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Any person who votes or attempts to vote by absentee ballot at any primary or election under Article 10 of this chapter who knows that he or she is not qualified to vote shall be guilty of a felony and, upon conviction thereof, shall be sentenced to imprisonment for not less than one nor more than ten years or to pay a fine not to exceed $100,000.00, or both.

History

Code 1933, § 34-1932, enacted by Ga. L. 1964, Ex. Sess., p. 26, § 1; Ga. L. 1998, p.

295, § 1; Ga. L. 2007, p. 536, § 10/SB 40; Ga. L. 2008, p. 781, § 19/HB 1112.

Annotations

JUDICIAL DECISIONS Construction. - O.C.G.A. § 21-2-573 has never defined who is eligible to vote because the phrase “is not qualified to vote” encompasses persons who do not meet the qualifications to vote at all in the relevant election, O.C.G.A. § 21-2-216 (setting forth qualifications of electors), apart from whether the electors meet whatever qualifications might have existed for voting by absentee ballot; the

General Assembly clarified that any elector can seek to vote by absentee ballot without having a reason, yet the legislature did not amend § 21-2-573, indicating that electors can still violate § 21-2-573 if the electors are not qualified to vote at all. Spalding County Bd. of Elections v. McCord, 287 Ga. 835, 700 S.E.2d 558, 2010 Ga. LEXIS 644 (2010).

OPINIONS OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL Fingerprinting not required. - An offense under O.C.G.A. § 21-2-573 would not be designated as one which requires

fingerprinting. 1998 Op. Att’y Gen. No. 98-20.

RESEARCH REFERENCES Am. Jur. 2d. 26 Am. Jur. 2d, Elections, § 448.

C.J.S. 29 C.J.S., Elections, § 572.

Notes of Decisions

Cited in 1 case, 2010–2010 · leading case: Spalding Cnty. Bd. of Elections v. McCord, 700 S.E.2d 558 (Ga. 2010).

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Spalding Cnty. Bd. of Elections v. McCord, 700 S.E.2d 558 (Ga. 2010). · cites it 10× “” McCord argues that, if any registered voter can vote by absentee ballot without needing a reason to do so, it cannot he a crime to vote as an unqualified absentee voter.”

Annotations are extracted automatically from the opinions in the Syfert caselaw corpus and ranked by authority, recency, and treatment. Dots show Syfertize treatment of the citing case itself.