As the title indicates, I'm starting to get scared I won't be able to vote, and wanted to (a) seek some advice to see if anyone has good suggestions and (b) flag this issue in case it is happening to other people.
I am registered to vote in Georgia (Atlanta/Fulton County). I have voted several times before, including in the 2008 primary. I am currently out of the state, and plan on returning to Atlanta on Sunday (and had planned on volunteering on election day). For all those reasons, I requested an absentee ballot 12 days ago, which still has not arrived.
I called the Fulton County elections office earlier today, and gave them my information. They found my voter registration record, but no evidence that my request for absentee ballot had be received or processed. The person I spoke to -- who was very polite and tried to be helpful -- told me that it's possible it hasn't been reviewed/processed yet because there's a giant backlog.
I told her that even if my request was processed today and the ballot was sent today, it likely would not reach my out of town address (in TX) in time, so I asked for advice. She suggested I send in another absentee ballot request, addressed to her attention, asking the ballot to be mailed to my home address, which would still give me a chance to fill it out and drop it off on Election Day or the day before.
But the fax machine has been busy all day (and in talking to other people, apparently this has been true for the last few business days). They are no longer picking up the phone.
My fear is that my ballot request will get processed and mailed out, but when it's too late for me to receive it. My understanding in this case is that I might be prevented from voting in person, since they'll have a record of the ballot going out. Anyone know if that's true?
Any suggestions? Anyone been through a similar situation?
Note: I'm still relatively new to this site, so I'm not sure if this is really considered a diary or not. I imagine that it squeaks by because I imagine others might be in a similar situation, so it would be good to get a dialog going. If I'm wrong, I'll delete it if you tell me to...