State Election Chief Visits Scene Of Long Primary Lines To Detail Prep Work

From the Georgia Recorder:

By Ross Williams

November 2, 2020

Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger returned to Atlanta’s Park Tavern Monday, Election Day eve, to discuss changes he hopes will help Tuesday run smoothly despite expected record turnout.

Park Tavern was the scene of the line during the June 9 primary election, when last-minute precinct closures led to thousands of voters being assigned to the restaurant and event space. Photos of hundreds of voters lined up inside and outside the restaurant became emblematic of an election fraught with problems, especially in metro Atlanta.

Early voting for the Nov. 3 general election has been smoother, though long lines and technical issues were reported on Oct. 12, the first day of early voting, and Tropical Storm Zeta caused some polling places to temporarily lose power.

The state has taken steps to solve the issues causing those long lines, but problems will likely still arise with 2 million voters expected to put the poll workers and ballot machines through a stress test, Raffensperger said.

“There’s never been a perfect election. This one has gone very well so far,” he said. “Tomorrow, we’ll have challenges. The job of the counties, the poll managers, the poll workers, will be to address those issues quickly. The state stands ready to help where we can.”

There are several good reasons to be optimistic things will run smoother heading into Election Day.

Counties have added more polling places, especially Fulton County, the scene of most of June’s election woes, which added 91 polling places, increasing the total number by more than 50%. In addition, more than 50,000 new Georgians have signed up to become poll workers, and there will be nearly 2,000 field service technicians deployed across each of Georgia’s counties to handle technical issues that may arise.

Many more Georgia voters cast their ballots early this year compared with the last presidential election year, Raffensperger said. More than 3.9 million votes have been cast in-person or by mail as of Sunday, nearly surpassing 2016’s final total of 4.1 million votes.

“We have moved about 1.4 million voters who would normally have been Election Day voters off of that day, and they’ve either voted early or voted absentee,” Raffensperger said. “This has been a resounding success.”

About 7.6 million voters are registered in Georgia, and the fact that so many of them cast their ballots before Election Day could make life a little easier for poll workers, voting system implementation manager Gabriel Sterling said.

“We normally see a big spike on the Friday before election,” Sterling said. “We didn’t see that big spike, we saw an uptick, but it’s not the big 50%, 100% more, because they spread themselves out. So by moving those 1.4 to 1.5 million people over, we know we’re going to lower the impact on Election Day.”

This story was originally published by the Georgia Recorder. For more stories from the Georgia Recorder, visit GeorgiaRecorder.com.