Election-eve lawsuits target ballot rules in key U.S. states

MARIETTA, Ga., (Reuters) - With just hours left before U.S midterm voters head to the polls on Tuesday, courts are hearing a handful of last-minute lawsuits that could affect election rules and the counting of ballots in battleground states.

U.S. Senate candidate John Fetterman and other Democrats sued in Pennsylvania federal court on Monday to force officials to include undated mail-in ballots in the state's vote count, following a similar lawsuit on behalf of voting rights groups by the American Civil Liberties Union in Pennsylvania on Friday.

The lawsuits come after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court last week granted a request by Republicans to block the ballots from being counted but gridlocked on whether doing so would violate civil rights law.

In Georgia, the ACLU and lawyers for Cobb County were also in court on Monday, hammering an agreement for a judge to extend until Nov. 14 a key deadline for 1,036 voters who requested absentee ballots but never received one.

The ACLU had sued on Sunday after Cobb County officials acknowledged the error. Of the affected voters, a lawyer for the county told the court that 585 had already been overnighted a ballot or had canceled their absentee ballot and voted early. That left 451 voters with residences in Georgia who had yet to receive a ballot.

And in Arizona, a judge is preparing to rule on whether a hand count of ballots can proceed in Cochise County on the state's southeastern border.

Lawyers aligned with both Democrats and Republicans have brought waves of lawsuits seeking to define the voting rules for the midterm elections. Tuesday's vote will determine political control of Congress for the next two years, defining the second half of President Joe Biden's term and the federal government's policy priorities, as well as control of governorships in swing states.

CLOSE RACES

While none of the lawsuits threaten sweeping changes to Election Day rules, they could affect close races, like those for U.S. Senate seats in Pennsylvania and Georgia, that will help determine party control of the Senate.

Fetterman and Republican Mehmet Oz are neck-and-neck in the Pennsylvania polls. And Georgia's Cobb County is part of the populous Atlanta metropolitan area, which played a key role in Democrats' 2020 election wins. Democrat Raphael Warnock and Republican Herschel Walker are also in a close U.S. Senate race in that state.

In the Cochise County hand count case, Arizona's secretary of state's office has argued that the longer hand-count process could risk the state's ability to certify its election results by a Dec. 5 deadline.

Some jurisdictions adopted hand counts following debunked but widespread claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election. U.S. officials have called 2020 the most secure count in the nation's history.

Another hand count in Nevada's rural Nye County was shut down earlier this month in favor of machine counting after the state supreme court struck down key parts of the process.

(Reporting by Jacqueline Thomsen in Washington and Nathan Layne in Marietta, Georgia; Editing by David Bario and Aurora Ellis)

By Nathan Layne and Jacqueline Thomsen