MARIETTA, Ga. (AP) — Georgia's third-largest county is behind schedule in sending more than 3,000 mail-in ballots to voters just days before the election.

To deliver ballots on time, election officials in Cobb County, north of Atlanta, used U.S. Postal Service express delivery and UPS overnight delivery, mailing ballots using prepaid express return envelopes.

“We want to maintain voter trust by being transparent about the situation,” Tori Silas, chairwoman of the county elections board, said in a statement Thursday. “We are taking every step possible to make these ballots available to voters who requested them.”

Silas blamed the delay on faulty equipment and a late surge in absentee ballot requests in the week before the Oct. 25 deadline.

However, a judge ruled Friday that Cobb County voters who receive their mail-in ballots late can return them until Nov. 8, three days after Election Day, as long as they are postmarked by Tuesday, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

The ruling came after the American Civil Liberties Union and the Southern Poverty Law Center filed a lawsuit seeking to extend the deadline.

Georgia voters did broke early voter turnout records According to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger's office, more than 3.8 million ballots had been cast as of Friday afternoon, representing more than half of the state's active voters. The balance sheet includes more than 238,000 absentees.

In Cobb County, election officials said voters whose absentee ballots were late could still vote in person on the last day of early voting on Friday or Tuesday. The county election office planned to remain open through the weekend and Monday to accept absentee ballots cast in person.

However, the elections board said more than 1,000 of the late mail-in ballots were sent to people outside of Georgia.

A county spokesman, Ross Cavitt, declined Friday to comment on how many, if any, of the late ballots still needed to be mailed, citing pending litigation.

The civil rights groups' lawsuit was filed on behalf of three Cobb County voters who said they had not received absentee ballots in the mail as of Friday. The lawsuit says that while county election officials “have taken some measures to alleviate the problem, these measures are far from sufficient to protect their right to vote.”