Community Corner
Georgia Voters Ready For “different Election Day” With Long Lines Likely
Georgians who waited to vote today and are lucky enough to be sitting on an absentee ballot have an Election Day ticket to bypass the lo ...
By Stanley Dunlap
Georgians who waited to vote today and are lucky enough to be sitting on an absentee ballot have an Election Day ticket to bypass the long lines expected at some of the state’s busier polling places.
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As many as 400,000 Georgians are projected to vote in today’s primary election following a record turnout for a primary that’s counted 1.2 million votes by absentee ballots and early in-person voting. If you are still holding onto an unmailed absentee ballot, you can use your county’s drop box to cast your vote.
For most Georgians, this election is their first contact with a new touch screen voting system. Adding to the potential slowdown from past years are safety precautions like sanitizing and social distancing prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said at a Monday press conference.
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“It’s going to be a different Election Day than we’ve ever seen,” Raffensperger said. “We are still in the grips, albeit a loosening one of COVID-19. Fewer people will be able to be in the room voting that we used to see due to social distancing. The time between the use of machines will be longer because of disinfecting protocols.”
On Friday, the final day of early voting, some Fulton County voters waited six hours or longer before getting a chance to cast their ballots. Throughout the state, election officials are struggling to cover for a shortage of poll workers with fewer polling sites and voting machines than usual as well.
The state’s new $104 million voting system includes a touch screen and will now produce a paper printout of the voter’s selections and a bar code that is then scanned by a poll worker. When early voting started May 18, far fewer voters showed up than last week and the small number of polling places were able to handle the people who preferred casting ballots in person than trusted mail-in absentee ballots.
The recent relocation of polling places in many counties across the state is sure to confuse voters accustomed to casting ballots at a familiar school gym or church, while long lines and COVID-19 guidelines add more difficulty, said Common Cause Georgia executive director Aunna Dennis.
Tuesday’s election not only includes primary elections for the U.S. Senate and Congress, but many contested state legislative seats and hundreds of local races ranging from county commissioners to mayors, to sheriffs and judges.
“We’re anticipating tomorrow will be very exciting, with a lot of energy,” Dennis said. “We are anticipating a lot of calls to our voter protection hotline (866-Our-Vote). We will also have poll monitors in the field across the state.”
As efforts to contain the COVID-19 pandemic grew in late winter, Raffensperger twice delayed the election and sent out 6.9 million absentee ballot applications. Voters returned more than 900,000 absentee ballots by Monday.
“I ask everyone to be patient, we are in effect, all in this together,” Raffensperger said. “When we started this year we thought rolling out our new verifiable paper ballot system would be the hardest thing to do. No one predicted that COVID-19 would change everything we do.”
County election officials across Georgia aren’t expected to be able to provide enough voting machines to avoid the long lines that formed at precincts in early voting, which will likely disenfranchise many voters, according to the Democratic Party of Georgia.
And for Common Cause, the push is to get state and local elections administrators to take lessons from the primary to work with voting rights advocates to fix problems at the ballot box in time for August’s runoff and November’s election.
“We need to be able to come together to do troubleshooting planning beforehand, not when election issues are arising,” Dennis said. “We need to be able to talk through these issues and create strategic planning.”
Election results will not be released until the last precinct closes, unlike elections past when results were announced as ballots were counted. That means it could be days before the results of some of the most closely contested election results are announced.
“I think that is the fairest thing for all candidates,” Raffensperger said. “It will take longer for us to get results. When you add paper that is what happens.”
That could make for an anxious few days for candidates in closely contested races, like the Democrats competing to unseat Republican David Perdue in November.
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This story was originally published by the Georgia Recorder. For more stories from the Georgia Recorder, visit GeorgiaRecorder.com.
