A federal judge in Georgia rejected arguments for the state to reopen voter registration ahead of November’s election due to disruptions caused by Hurricane Helene.

U.S. District Judge Eleanor Ross, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama in 2013, said in a verbal ruling on Thursday that she would not extend Georgia’s voter registration deadline, which closed on Monday. Three groups had sued the state to reopen voter registration and extend it until October 14, arguing that devastation from Helene got in the way of people being able to register for the general election.

Ross said in her ruling that the groups did not sufficiently prove that residents were harmed by Helene’s impacts. She also said that there is no state law that grants Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who are both Republicans, the power to extend the voter registration deadline.

“I don’t think we had even one voter who had been harmed or would likely be harmed by failure to register to vote,” Ross said on Thursday, according to the Associated Press (AP) report on the matter.

The lawsuit was filed by the Georgia conference of the NAACP, the Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda and the New Georgia Project. Kemp and Raffensperger, the defendants in the case, had argued that the state’s election process would be interrupted if the deadline for voter registration was extended. The state had pointed out that absentee ballots have already been mailed and early in-person voting was scheduled to begin on Tuesday, October 15.

Ross said that the “harm to the state’s interests outweighs the plaintiffs’ interests” in the case.

The plaintiffs had argued that they had to cancel their voter registration activities last week after Helene ripped through the Southeast as a Category 4 storm. The hurricane brought widespread flooding and damage stretching from Florida’s Big Bend Region north to the Appalachian Mountains. At least 230 people have died due to the storm.

The groups behind the lawsuit said that voter registrations in Georgia usually spike just before the state’s deadline. Amir Badat, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, told Ross that Helene caused “in many circumstances, complete disenfranchisement for prospective voters.”

State lawyers argued in court that there was a difference between an individual’s right to vote and the right of a nonprofit to run a voter registration drive.

The plaintiffs in the case told AP that they disagreed with Ross’ decision but that they are “still going to fight to make sure every voter’s rights are protected.”

“We believe voters were harmed, but this doesn’t deter us,” said Helen Butler, the executive director of the Coalition for the People’s Agenda.

This is a developing story that will be updated as information becomes available.

Why Georgia football head coach Kirby Smart isn’t going to take a job in the NFL or the New York Jets job.

While the college football season is in full swing right now, Georgia football head coach Kirby Smart has been linked to an open position in the NFL. Earlier this week, the New York Jets fired head coach Robert Saleh and the organization is now on the search for someone to fill the position. Coach Smart’s name has been attached to the opening. It’s not the first time Smart’s name has been thrown into the ring for a job in the NFL and it likely won’t be the last, but there are multiple reasons why Smart won’t take a job at the professional level.

First of all, Smart is a college football lifer. Since getting his college coaching start in 1999 at the University of Georgia as an administrative assistant, his entire coaching career outside of one year with the Miami Dolphins in 2006 has been spent at the college level. His identity as a coach is completely built around coaching at the collegiate level. The same things that work at the college level do not work at the professional level. It would require Smart to change quite a few things if he were to make the jump.

Second, Smart didn’t just take any head coaching job. He took the job at his alma mater and at a place he loves. You would have a hard time finding a person who loves the University of Georgia more than Smart and his family, so speaking specifically to the New York Jets job, it’s hard to imagine Smart would up and leave his program and the place he calls home to go to the NFL in the middle of the season.

Another crucial aspect of this train of thought is Smart has a 10-year contract worth $130 million that goes through 2033. That means he is earning $13 million per year and is the highest-paid public school coach in college athletics. There are only five coaches in the NFL that are making more money than Smart currently is at Georgia (Kyle Shannahan 49ers, Sean McVay Rams, Jim Harbaugh Chargers, Sean Payton Broncos and Andy Reid Chiefs). For further context, prior to being fired, Saleh was making $5 million per year with the Jets.

It’s understandable why Smart’s name continues to be connected to openings in the NFL as he is widely considered to be the best coach in college football, but making the jump to the professional level never seemed to be in the cards for Smart. He’s the head coach at one of the top programs in all of college football and is one of the highest-paid coaches at both the college and NFL levels. Everything points to Smart staying at Georgia for as long as he wants to continue coaching football.

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ATLANTA — For the first time in over 10 years, Luci Harrell can vote in a presidential election.

Around the time she graduated law school this year, Harrell completed two years of parole and became legally allowed to register.

“It feels important to me…real and symbolic,” Harrell said. “For years I was required by the federal government to pay taxes and pay student loans, yet being denied the ability to vote.”

Harrell is one of an estimated 450,000 people in Georgia with past convictions who are eligible to cast ballots. As get-out-the-vote efforts ramp up across the swing state, advocates have a hard time reaching those who are formerly incarcerated, in part because many of them don’t know they can vote.

“Nobody comes back and informs you that your voting rights are restored,” said Pamela Winn, an Atlanta organizer who was formerly incarcerated. “You don’t receive a letter. There’s no kind of notification. So most people, once they get a felony, in their mind all their rights are gone.”

According to a report released Thursday by The Sentencing Project, which advocates for reducing reducing imprisonment, almost 250,000 people in Georgia cannot vote because of a felony conviction, out of 4 million nationwide.

The national rate has fallen in recent years as some states expanded voting rights for people with past convictions, but Georgia has not followed suit. Most cannot vote until they have completed their prison sentences and are off probation or parole.

Fourteen other states have similar restrictions and 10 are even stricter, but Georgia has the eighth highest rate of people who cannot vote due to past convictions, something observers attribute in part to the state’s unusually long prison and probation sentences.

“We have the No. 1 rate of correctional control,” said Ann Colloton, policy and outreach coordinator for the Georgia Justice Project, which advocates for people in the criminal justice system. “More people per capita are either incarcerated, on probation or on parole than any other state. That’s what drives our rate of felony disenfranchisement.”

A billboard across from a federal courthouse in Atlanta shows Winn and Travis Emory Barber, who also advocates for people who have been incarcerated, standing cross-armed in orange suits alongside the words, “Formerly Incarcerated People/USE YOUR POWER TO VOTE.”

Last Sunday, the day before the state voter registration deadline, the duo set up a tent in west Atlanta to register people. Winn said her organization, IMPPACT, canvasses in areas where there are high rates of people on probation, but there is no way to target people who are eligible or will soon be eligible to vote.

Before he came by the tent, Sirvoris Sutton wasn’t sure whether he could register to vote. He originally chose not to because he didn’t want to be accused of voter fraud, which former President Donald Trump and his supporters have falsely said was widespread in Georgia during the 2020 election.

He learned that day that he will not be able to vote for 11 years, the amount of time he has left on parole.

“It feels like another phase of incarceration again,” Sutton said. “I’m out here in free society. How could my one vote be a threat to the democratic process?”

Of the quarter-million Georgians who cannot vote because of criminal convictions, about 190,000 are ineligible because they are on probation or parole, according to The Sentencing Project. That is the case even though the state passed legislation in 2021 creating a pathway for people to terminate their probation early.

Some people with past convictions feel the government has always failed them and don’t want to vote.

For example, when Christopher Buffin of Terrell County recently left prison, he knew there was a chance he could vote. And two days before Monday’s deadline, an advocate helped him register. But for now at least, he feels too frustrated to actually cast a ballot because he has not gotten his disability benefits back since leaving prison.

“In a marginalized community, voting isn’t really a priority,” Winn said, noting that people who are incarcerated are disproportionately Black and come from economically depressed communities. “The priority is survival.”

Inconsistency from state to state also adds to confusion about whether people can register, observers say.

“The U.S. is an incredibly patchwork nation when it comes to these laws,” said Sarah Shannon, a University of Georgia sociology professor who worked on The Sentencing Project’s report.

Florida has the most who are unable to vote. Voters there approved an amendment in 2018 to expand voting rights for people with past convictions, but legislation and legal rulings reimposed restrictions for those with outstanding fees. In 2022, Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, said an election police unit arrested 20 people for registering even though they had a felony conviction that made them ineligible.

And in Nebraska, the secretary of state and attorney general issued an opinion this year against two state laws that let people vote after completing their sentences.

Back in Georgia, Democratic senators introduced a bill in 2023 that would modify state law to permit people still serving time for a felony to vote as well as a resolution to remove the state’s constitutional restriction on people voting before completing their sentences. They didn’t pass, however.

Such restrictions on voting rights date back to Jim Crow, after the 13th amendment outlawed slavery except as a punishment for crime. States such as Georgia added language to their constitutions that banned voting for people convicted of a felony “involving moral turpitude,” a vague term that state officials say apply to all felonies.

Organizers feel the weight of this history today as Black people are incarcerated at disproportionately high rates. The Sentencing Project estimates that over half of the people who can’t vote due to past convictions in Georgia are Black. But even for those who can, getting them to vote is an ongoing battle.

“Because people are marginalized and because they have criminal background, they are led to believe that their vote doesn’t count,” Winn said.

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Kramon is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow Kramon on X: @charlottekramon