Georgia: Extreme voting lines expose where Georgia primary failed | Mark Niesse and Nick Thieme/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The last polling place in Georgia closed well after midnight. Voters had waited over five hours at Christian City, an assisted living community south of Atlanta. The line twisted far down the street, the most egregious example of extreme delays to participate in Georgia’s troubled primary. A new trove of elections data shows which voting locations stayed open late, highlighting where voters suffered the longest lines at Georgia’s 2,300 polling places. The secretary of state’s office reported the information to county election officials so they can make improvements before November’s high-turnout presidential election. About 11% of voting sites in Georgia closed over an hour late, according to an analysis by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution of the elections data. The epicenter of voting problems was Fulton County, where more than three-quarters of polling places closed after 8 p.m. Black voters bore the brunt of long lines and late closings in overcrowded, understaffed and poorly equipped polling places. Only 61% of majority Black precincts closed on time compared with 80% of mostly white precincts, the AJC’s analysis found. Georgia’s election day was a debacle created by the coronavirus pandemic, high turnout and difficulties operating new voting computers. Precincts closed, poll workers quit and social-distancing restrictions limited the number of people who could vote at a time.

Georgia: Anatomy of an Election ‘Meltdown’ in Georgia | Danny Hakim, Reid J. Epstein and Stephanie Saul/The New York Times

Last month, Daryl Marvin got his first taste of voting in Georgia. Mr. Marvin had previously lived in Connecticut, where voting was a brisk process measured in minutes. But on the day of the primary, June 9, he and his wife waited four hours to vote at Park Tavern, an Atlanta restaurant where more than 16,000 voters were consolidated into a single precinct. An electrical engineer by training, Mr. Marvin was baffled by what he saw when he finally got inside: a station with 15 to 20 touch screens on which to vote but only a single scanner to process the printed ballots. “The scanner was the choke point,” he said. “Nobody thought about it, and this is Operations Research 101. It’s not very difficult to figure it out.” Captured in drone footage, beamed across airwaves and internet, the interminable lines at Atlanta polling sites became an instant and indelible omen of voting breakdown in this pandemic-challenged presidential election year. Elections workers described a cascade of failures as they struggled to activate and operate Georgia’s new high-tech voting system. Next came a barrage of partisan blame-throwing: The Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, accused the liberal-leaning Fulton County, which includes most of Atlanta, of botching the election, while Democratic leaders saw the fiasco as just the latest episode in Republicans’ yearslong effort to disenfranchise the state’s minority voters. Six weeks later, as the political calendar bends toward November and the presidential campaigns look to Georgia as a possible battleground, the faults in the state’s balky elections system remain largely unresolved. And it has become increasingly clear that what happened in June was a collective collapse.

Georgia: Hourly Voting Data Shows Where Georgia’s Process Failed – And Flourished | Stephen Fowler/Georgia Public Broadcasting

In the first hour of voting on June 9, 148 people used the state’s new poll pad check-in system to cast their ballot in Georgia’s primary election at the Newnan Centre polling place in Coweta County. Across the metro Atlanta area at Cross Keys High School in DeKalb County, that number was one. As national media outlets, voting rights groups and concerned voters continue to turn their eyes towards our state’s election administration, GPB News is publishing another set of data from the primary that paints a more complicated and nuanced picture of what went wrong – and right. Analyzing the hour-by-hour check-in data from the secretary of state’s office, some larger trends about voting emerge. Across the state, there were more people processed as the day progressed, peaking with 104,422 voters from 5-6 p.m., more than double the number of voters in the first hour of the day. Some of the largest polling places mirror that trend. At its slowest, the Newnan Centre saw 88 check-ins from 8-9 a.m. At its peak, 216 voters passed through in the 4 p.m. hour, more than a quarter of the state’s polling places saw the entire day of voting.

Georgia: Fulton County reverses course on emailed absentee ballot applications | Mark Niesse Ben Brasch/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Election officials in Fulton County on Tuesday resumed accepting absentee ballot requests submitted by email, backtracking from a decision to require absentee applications by mail, fax or in person. The county’s reversal came quickly after complaints that its refusal to process emailed ballot requests would reduce voting access and violate Georgia voting laws. Fulton, the most populous county in the state, initially rejected emailed absentee ballot requests following struggles to manage a flood of applications before the June 9 primary election. Many voters in Fulton said they never received their absentee ballots, forcing them to wait in line for hours to vote in person during the coronavirus pandemic. Voters who emailed absentee ballot requests Monday and part of Tuesday received a response from Fulton asking them to instead send paper applications by mail. The county on Tuesday restarted processing absentee ballot requests for the Aug. 11 runoff, with some limits meant to avoid problems that surfaced before the primary. Only one absentee ballot application may be attached to each email. Absentee ballot applications submitted by email must be less than 5 megabytes in size, legible and in pdf or jpg file format.

Georgia: Officials try to avoid calamity, fix election problems | Mark Niesse Amanda C. Coyne/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The Georgia Secretary of State’s Office is working with county elections officials to avoid a repeat of June’s chaotic primary elections that included hours-long lines to vote. Poll worker jobs will be advertised through social media, newspaper and radio. Tech experts will be dispatched to set up voting equipment. State election officials will tell counties where precincts need to be added. These efforts are designed to help county election offices prevent problems in primary runoffs Aug. 11 and the presidential election Nov. 3, when election day turnout is expected to be three times higher than the primary. Whether the measures will work depends on election officials’ ability to get staff hired and trained, add voting locations and manage the ongoing threat of the coronavirus pandemic, which contributed to extensive wait times because of social distancing requirements.

Georgia: Old voting machines mothballed at port, saving tax money | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Georgia’s old voting computers will be moved to a government warehouse at the Port of Savannah, saving taxpayers about $432,000 a year in storage costs. U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg recently approved the agreement, which resolves concerns about the expense of preserving 30,000 voting touchscreens for an election security lawsuit. Plaintiffs in the case want to inspect the computers to find out whether they were infected by viruses or malware. The 18-year-old computers, which recorded votes electronically, were replaced this year by a voting system that uses new touchscreens and also prints out paper ballots. The Georgia Ports Authority will store the obsolete equipment, which would fill 48 semi-trailers, at no ongoing cost to the state. The government will pay to transport the computers from rented warehouses to the port.

Georgia: Georgia election board extends rules for absentee voting | David Wickert/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The State Election Board on Wednesday extended two temporary rules that will make it easier to process large numbers of absentee ballots for November’s general election. The first rule will allow local election officials to continue to provide drop boxes for absentee ballots — instead of requiring voters to mail the ballots or deliver them to election offices by hand. The second will allow election officials to process — but not tally — those ballots before election day. The board adopted both rules on a temporary basis leading up to the June 9 primary election. Wednesday’s vote extended the emergency measures for an additional six months, and the board is expected to make them permanent before November. The move is a sign that absentee ballots are likely to play a substantial role in Georgia elections moving forward — at least during the coronavirus pandemic. It’s also the latest sign the state is trying to salvage what lessons it can from the June 9 election fiasco that drew national condemnation. “We want to let Georgians know that we are all going to work together to make the elections in August, November and January a success,” Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger told the election board.

Georgia: Election Board OKs Continued Use Of Absentee Drop Boxes, Early Processing Of Ballots | Stephen Fowler/Georgia Public Broadcasting

The Georgia State Election Board Wednesday voted to extend a pair of emergency rules that make it easier for some voters to cast absentee ballots and for counties to process them. One emergency rule passed mid-April allowed Georgia counties to set up secure 24/7 drop boxes for voters to return absentee ballots without relying on the mail system or needing to vote in person for the June 9 primary. Several counties opted to purchase and use drop boxes as part of an overall shift to more absentee-by-mail voting in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic. The amendment passed Wednesday removes language limiting drop boxes to the June primary election and added additional requirements for opening and closing the drop boxes and when county officials had to empty them out. A second amendment allows counties to continue to begin processing absentee ballots before Election Day, as a record 1.1 million people voted absentee for the primary and twice that is expected in November. The State Election Board also voted to require counties to post the dates and times they will be processing absentee ballots more prominently on the secretary of state’s website and on the local county’s site.

Georgia: Secretary of State: Audit confirms presidential primary results | Adrianne Murchison/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Following widespread criticism of the voting process in Fulton County, an audit has confirmed the outcomes of the presidential preference primaries.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said a secure paper-ballot system was used Monday to verify Fulton’s results in the June 9 primary. According to the statement, Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections officials conducted an audit of the primary contests by comparing results on a random group of paper ballots in a selected race with results on the election equipment.

A formula was used to select a random sample of 27 ballots with the assistance of VotingWorks, a nonpartisan, nonprofit that works to ensure secure software in voting machines, said Walter Jones, a spokesman for Raffensperger.

Long lines, technical problems with election equipment and late opening precincts were complaints from voters on Election Day that left many concerned with the accuracy of the state’s new voting machines.

Raffensperger has said his office plans to provide more support to local offices and he would put forth legislation giving him the power to intervene in county elections management, if necessary, for November’s presidential election.

He was confident that Monday’s audit validated “results produced by Georgia’s new secure paper-ballot system.”

“Auditing returns can now be a regular part of elections because we have paper ballots,” he added. “That gives Georgians confidence that their votes are counted fairly and accurately.”

Full Article: Raffensperger: Audit confirms presidential primary results.

Georgia: DeKalb Commissioner Cochran-Johnson sponsors bill to expand to online voting | Roz Edward/Atlanta Daily World

As voting irregularities ranging from technical issues to poorly trained staff emerge across Georgia following the June primary elections, Commissioner Lorraine Cochran-Johnson has presented a resolution requesting the Georgia General Assembly research and expand voting options to include online capabilities. The resolution presented by the Governing Authority of DeKalb County requests the General Assembly to establish online voting to create a more secure, convenient and accessible opportunity for citizens to exercise a fundamental principle of American democracy. Through the establishment of online voting, the State of Georgia, counties and local municipalities will be able to reduce the financial burden associated with staffing various elections.

Georgia: Absentee voting program embraced by Georgia voters, then abandoned by Republican Secretary of State | ark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

When election officials mailed absentee applications to nearly 7 million Georgia voters, they responded in droves. Absentee voting rates skyrocketed, from 6% of all ballots cast in the 2018 general election to over half of the votes cast in this month’s primary. A record 1.1 million voters cast absentee ballots in the primary, avoiding human contact during the coronavirus pandemic. Voters won’t have the same easy access to absentee voting again. Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who started the absentee ballot request program in April, decided against mailing ballot applications to voters for the presidential election, when turnout is expected to reach a new high of 5 million. He said it would be impractical and too expensive to repeat the effort this fall. Instead, Raffensperger plans to create a website where voters can request absentee ballots on their own. All registered voters are eligible to cast absentee ballots. The move is likely to reduce requests for absentee ballots.

Georgia: Ban on mailing absentee ballot application forms dies at Georgia Legislature | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A bill that would have barred election officials from mailing absentee ballot applications to Georgia voters failed to pass Friday. The proposal sputtered amid opposition to a limiting voting access after record numbers of Georgians cast absentee ballots in the state’s primary election. Over half of all primary voters, 1.1 million, voted absentee. The measure arose after Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger mailed absentee ballot request forms to 6.9 million voters before the June 9 primary. While the absentee effort allowed voters to avoid human contact during the coronavirus pandemic, it created problems as well. Some counties, especially Fulton County, struggled to process absentee ballot applications for weeks, forcing voters back to the polls. And House Speaker David Ralston said widespread use of absentee ballots created opportunities for fraud. The legislation, Senate Bill 463, never received another vote after it passed the House Governmental Affairs Committee on Wednesday.

Georgia: Questioning State Elections Officials, Lawmakers Express Concerns Over November Vote | Emil Moffatt/WABE

Five million Georgians are expected to vote in November, an election that will come less than five months after the state experienced a bumpy primary. Amid a global health pandemic, the state rolled out its new voting system statewide for the first time on June 9. The result: many voters had to wait in lines for hours as poll workers – some of them brand new – sorted out technical problems. “We think the most important thing, obviously is training, training and re-training,” said Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger as he spoke in front of the House Governmental Affairs Committee. “And having more techs [technical support personnel] in there so that any issues that do pop up can be really handled expeditiously so that we have an improved result in November.” Raffensperger pledged to have technical support at every precinct in November, something that wasn’t there in June. Tuesday’s meeting started an hour late because House members were still across the street voting on a hate crimes bill which had been passed by the Senate just a short time before. And when the meeting started, Raffensperger made only a brief statement and took a handful of questions, citing other obligations. That didn’t sit well with House Minority Leader Bob Trammell, who said he wanted to hear more from the state’s top election’s official. “I would point out that voters often waited in line for hours, and the secretary was here for 20 minutes,” said Trammell.

Georgia: Republican Lawmakers Advance Bid to Ban Automatic Absentee Ballot Mailings | Kayla Goggin/Courthouse News

Georgia lawmakers advanced legislation Wednesday which would ban election officials from mailing absentee ballot request forms unless a voter requests one. The measure is part of Senate Bill 463, which also loosens restrictions on ballot signature-matching requirements and provides for the division of large precincts under certain conditions. The bill could receive a vote in the Georgia House before the Legislature ends its current session Friday. If the measure passes and is signed by Republican Governor Brian Kemp, it could take effect before the November general election. If passed, the bill would prevent Georgia election officials from repeating a large-scale absentee voting effort undertaken by Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger prior to the primary election. Raffensperger mailed ballot request forms to 6.9 million registered voters ahead of the primary to encourage voting by mail in light of the coronavirus pandemic. The effort led to increased voter turnout, particularly among Democrats.

Georgia: Election officials grilled over lines and problems in Georgia primary | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

State representatives demanded improvements in Georgia’s elections Tuesday as they confronted Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger with questions about what went wrong. Raffensperger acknowledged that long lines in Georgia’s June 9 primary were “unacceptable” but downplayed problems with the state’s new voting system. He said most difficulties in the election occurred in Fulton County, which had some of the most extreme wait times.The state Capitol hearing, part of an investigation ordered by Republican House Speaker David Ralston, came as legislators are seeking ways to avoid a repeat of three-hour waits, precinct closures and equipment difficulties during a high-turnout presidential election in November. “It’s not going to work and it’s not going to be good enough for you to just keep saying it’s in Fulton County and not my issue,” said state Rep. Renitta Shannon, a Democrat from Decatur. “What specific policies are you going to put in place?” Raffensperger, a Republican, responded that election officials need to add voting locations, improve hands-on training and encourage early voting. He said he’s reaching out to community groups such as Rotary Clubs, Boy Scouts and sororities to ask whether they can host precincts.

Georgia: Fulton County, State Chart Path Forward To Fix Election Issues | Stephen Fowler/Georgia Public Broadcasting

While politicians and the public are still seeking answers about what went wrong with Georgia’s June 9 primary, officials from the state’s most populous county are looking to ensure the same issues don’t plague the August runoff and November general election. In a private meeting Monday, members of the Fulton County Board of Elections, the Secretary of State’s office and several civil rights groups including the Rainbow PUSH Coalition discussed concerns with the mail-in absentee voting process, polling place shortages and struggles with poll worker training that led to problems with a new $104-million voting system. “The most important thing is, we really just want to deal with the issues that we’ve been seeing for a long, long time,” Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said to the board members. “Because even though we don’t run elections, at the end of the day we’re in the hot seat – and I’m sure you’re in the hot seat.” On Election Day, voters in parts of metro Atlanta – especially in predominantly Black communities – waited in lines upwards of four hours as county officials grappled with fewer machines in polling places, fewer places to vote and fewer knowledgeable poll workers because of the coronavirus pandemic. Fulton County accounted for about 70% of reported issues statewide, the Secretary of State’s Office said.

Georgia: How Electronic Voting in Georgia Resulted in a Disenfranchising Debacle | Sue Halprin/The New Yorker

No one familiar with Georgia’s record of election administration was surprised to see another train wreck unfold during Tuesday’s primary. Lines were so long that some voters waited seven hours to vote. It was a monumental failure that—not surprisingly—occurred in predominantly African-American and poor neighborhoods. Part of the problem was the use of expensive, new voting machines, which could signal problems for the Presidential election, in November. On Tuesday, Georgians voted using thirty thousand new machines, called Ballot Marking Devices (B.M.D.s), which the state purchased last year for a hundred and seven million dollars, despite public opposition. When voters finally made it to the front of the line, they signed into electronic poll books (many of which malfunctioned) and were given a smart card loaded with the ballot for their district. They then inserted the card into the voting machine, the ballot popped up on a touch screen, they made their selections, and the machine printed out a summary of those choices.

Georgia: Elections head seeks changes to avoid lines in November | Mark NiesseBen Brasch/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Calls for monumental changes to Georgia’s elections arrived Wednesday, with elected officials from both parties demanding more voting locations, shorter lines and a management overhaul in Fulton County, where voters experienced the longest waits. The proposals came after a debacle in Georgia’s June 9 primary that left some voters in line for hours because of precinct closures, voting machine problems and complications stemming from the coronavirus pandemic.These efforts are meant to avoid a repeat of those issues in November’s presidential election, when three times as many in-person voters are expected. Turnout could exceed 5 million voters. In separate events, Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Democratic legislators from Fulton heaped blame Wednesday on the county’s elections office. Fulton voters crammed into precincts with few voting machines and a shortage of trained poll workers. Other parts of the state also had problems, especially in densely populated areas with high turnout, but 70% of the problems statewide occurred in Fulton, Raffensperger said.

Georgia: Havoc Raises New Doubts on Pricey ImageCast X Voting Machines | Nick Corasaniti and Stephanie Saul/The New York Times

As Georgia elections officials prepared to roll out an over $100 million high-tech voting system last year, good-government groups, a federal judge and election-security experts warned of its perils. The new system, they argued, was too convoluted, too expensive, too big — and was still insecure.  They said the state would regret purchasing the machines. On Tuesday, that admonition appeared prescient. A cascade of problems caused block-long lines across Georgia, as primary voters stood for hours while poll workers waited for equipment to be delivered or struggled to activate the system’s components. Locations ran out of provisional ballots. Many people, seeing no possible option to exercise their right to vote, simply left the lines. With partisans on both sides hurling blame for the meltdown, elections experts said there were too many moving parts to place the onus for Georgia’s election chaos on any single one. “The problem seems to have been a perfect storm (overused metaphor, but apt here) of new equipment, hasty training and a crush of tasks associated with both getting the mail ballots out the door and processed AND with running an in-person voting operation,” Charles Stewart III, a political scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote in an email.

Georgia: Secretary of State showed ‘deliberate indifference’ to voters: Stacey Abrams | Quinn Scanlan/ABC

Stacey Abrams, the 2018 Democratic gubernatorial candidate in Georgia, said Thursday that Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger "showed a deliberate indifference to the needs of Georgia voters" after Tuesday's primary election faced numerous problems, from lack of poll workers to issues with the voting machinery. "(Raffensperger) refused to exercise his responsibility to oversee our elections," Abrams said on ABC's "The View." "In fact, he said that he had no responsibility for what went wrong, that it wasn't his fault that he paid for $170 million worth of machinery that he didn't train people adequately to use." Abrams and the voter protection organization she founded, Fair Fight Action, were collecting voter testimonials all throughout Election Day and during an election night media availability, she said litigation would be coming and that it would be coming soon. Georgia's primary election was plagued by problems that left many voters waiting in line for hours, particularly in the state's largest county, Fulton, which is home to most of the city of Atlanta. On election night, Rick Barron, the director of elections for the county, said they hadn't "seen anything like this since 2012 in terms of issues on election day."

Georgia: Election Mess: Many Problems, Plenty of Blame, Few Solutions for November | Richard Fausset and Reid J. Epstein/The New York Times

Before Georgia’s embattled election officials can fix a voting system that suffered a spectacular collapse, leading to absentee ballots that never got delivered and hourslong waits at polling sites on Tuesday, they must first figure out who is responsible. As multiple investigations begin into what went wrong, and as Democrats accuse the state’s Republicans of voter suppression, a picture emerged Wednesday of a systematic breakdown that both revealed general incompetence and highlighted some of the thorny and specific challenges that the coronavirus pandemic may pose to elections officials nationwide. As it seeks answers, Georgia is being roiled by a politically volatile debate over whether the problems were the result of mere bungling, or an intentional effort by Republican officials to inhibit voting.

Georgia: ‘Chaos in Georgia’: Is messy primary a November harbinger? | Bill Barrow/Associated Press

The long-standing wrangle over voting rights and election security came to a head in Georgia, where a messy primary and partisan finger-pointing offered an unsettling preview of a November contest when battleground states could face potentially record turnout. Many Democrats blamed the Republican secretary of state for hourslong lines, voting machine malfunctions, provisional ballot shortages and absentee ballots failing to arrive in time for Tuesday’s elections. Democrat Joe Biden’s presidential campaign called it “completely unacceptable.” Georgia Republicans deflected responsibility to metro Atlanta’s heavily minority and Democratic-controlled counties, while President Donald Trump’s top campaign attorney decried “the chaos in Georgia.” It raised the specter of a worst-case November scenario: a decisive state, like Florida and its “hanging chads” and “butterfly ballots” in 2000, remaining in dispute long after polls close. Meanwhile, Trump, Biden and their supporters could offer competing claims of victory or question the election’s legitimacy, inflaming an already boiling electorate.

Georgia: Vote counting continues after problems in Georgia’s primary | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Election workers resumed counting votes Wednesday morning as they scanned hundreds of thousands of last-minute absentee ballots in Georgia’s primary, leaving the final result of races unsettled. The time it takes to count so many paper ballots was expected in an election where a record number of Georgians — over 1.1 million — voted from home during the coronavirus pandemic. But the uncertainty left voters and candidates waiting. It’s unclear whether counting would be completed Wednesday, but officials have warned the process could take a few days. After voters waited in long lines Tuesday, most in-person votes cast on the state’s new voting computers were counted late Tuesday night. Those votes, cast on printed-out paper ballots, were stored on optical scanning machines, making them easy to tabulate after polls closed. But opening, scanning and counting absentee ballots takes longer. Absentee ballots will be counted if they were received by election officials by 7 p.m. Tuesday.

Georgia: Voting machines and coronavirus force long lines on Georgia voters | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Georgia’s primary quickly turned into an ordeal for voters who waited for hours Tuesday when it became clear officials were unprepared for an election on new voting computers during the coronavirus pandemic. Poll workers couldn’t get voting machines to work. Precincts opened late. Social-distancing requirements created long lines. Some voters gave up and went home. The primary was a major test of Georgia’s ability to run a highly anticipated election in a potential battleground state ahead of November’s presidential election, when more than twice as many voters are expected. Elections officials fell short. “What is going on in Georgia? We have been waiting for hours. This is ridiculous. This is unfair,” said 80-year-old Anita Heard, who waited for hours to cast her ballot at Cross Keys High School, where poll workers couldn’t start voting computers and ran out of provisional ballots. Problems have been building for weeks as precincts closed, poll workers quit and the primary was postponed because of the health danger posed by the coronavirus crisis. Some voters south of Atlanta waited eight hours to vote on the last day of early voting Friday.

Georgia: From Long Lines To Frustrated Voters, Georgia Election Plagued By Problems | Steve Peoples, Ben Nadler and Sudhin Thanavala/Associated Press

Voters endured heat, pouring rain and waits as long as five hours Tuesday to cast ballots in Georgia, demonstrating a fierce desire to participate in the democratic process while raising questions about the emerging battleground state’s ability to manage elections in November when the White House is at stake. “It’s really disheartening to see a line like this in an area with predominantly black residents,” said Benaiah Shaw, a 25-year-old African American, as he cast a ballot in Atlanta. Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, had said his office wouldn’t begin to release results in Georgia until the last precinct had closed. He predicted the winners may not be known for days.

Georgia: In a Warning for November, Voters Endure Long Lines in Georgia’s Primary Election | Alexa Corse/Wall Street Journal

Voters in Georgia’s primary election Tuesday endured long lines at some voting sites, after the state adopted new voting machines and suffered shortages of poll workers because of the coronavirus pandemic. Some voters said they waited for hours to cast a ballot, though the state had been encouraging absentee voting. State officials said many of the delays occurred because poll workers were unfamiliar with the new voting machines or were due to other administrative issues such as equipment being delivered late. The delays in Georgia underscore the challenges for election officials across the country as they respond to the pandemic, cybersecurity concerns, and other hurdles ahead of November’s general election. “For November, we need to do a much better job of planning for the tens of millions of Americans who are going to be voting in person,” said David Becker, executive director and founder of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, who has been working with the Georgia secretary of state’s office. “We need to offer options for voters.”

Georgia: Primary elections quickly descended into chaos, with voting-machine problems, a lack of paper ballots, and hours-long lines at polling places | Grace Panetta/Business Insider

Voters throughout the metro Atlanta area faced immense difficulties voting in Georgia's primary election on Tuesday because of widespread problems with new electronic machines malfunctioning and shortages of paper ballots. Local reporters and voters said that in many precincts in the counties in and around Atlanta, including Fulton, Gwinnett, DeKalb, and Cobb, undertrained poll workers ran into trouble getting the new voting machines to work, and polling stations didn't have enough paper ballots for every voter to cast a provisional ballot, leading to hours-long lines. Many people didn't get to vote at all. Georgia had sent absentee-ballot requests to every active registered voter because of the COVID-19 pandemic, leading to record levels of mail-in voting. But the pandemic also meant shortages of poll workers and far fewer in-person polling places. While Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said on Monday that long lines were expected, the system experienced a meltdown on Tuesday as machines were delivered to the wrong place and officials had trouble getting them to work.

Georgia: ‘I Refuse Not to Be Heard’: Georgia in Uproar Over Voting Meltdown | Richard Fausset, Reid J. Epstein and Rick Rojas/The New York Times

Georgia’s statewide primary elections on Tuesday were overwhelmed by a full-scale meltdown of new voting systems put in place after widespread claims of voter suppression during the state’s 2018 governor’s election. Scores of new state-ordered voting machines were reported to be missing or malfunctioning, and hourslong lines materialized at polling places across Georgia. Some people gave up and left before casting a ballot, and concerns spread that the problems would disenfranchise untold voters, particularly African-Americans. Predominantly black areas experienced some of the worst problems. With Republican-leaning Georgia emerging as a possible battleground in this year’s presidential election and home to two competitive Senate races, the voting mess rattled Democratic officials and voters, with some blaming the state’s Republican governor and secretary of state for hastily instituting a new voting system without enough provisional ballots in case the voting machines did not function. “It is a disaster that was preventable,” Stacey Abrams, the Democrat who narrowly lost the disputed 2018 governor’s race, said in an interview Tuesday afternoon. “It is emblematic of the deep systemic issues we have here in Georgia. One of the reasons we are so insistent upon better operations is that you can have good laws, but if you have incompetent management and malfeasance, voters get hurt, and that’s what we see happening in Georgia today.”

Georgia: Georgia Betrays Its Voters Again | Charles Bethea/The New Yorker

In November of 2018, Alyssa Thys, a twenty-nine-year-old communications manager in Atlanta, waited in line for more than two hours to vote for Stacey Abrams, at her precinct in a working-class, predominantly black neighborhood. Thys, to whom I spoke at the time, called the experience “complete chaos and disorganization.” She returned to the same place, Pittman Park Recreation Center, on Tuesday, to vote in the primaries. (In the most high-profile race, seven Democrats, including Jon Ossoff, are running for the opportunity to unseat Georgia’s senior Republican senator, David Perdue, in November.) “Like, wow,” Thys, who is white, told me after another frustrating morning. “Nothing has been learned.” She’d arrived early again—at 6:45 a.m., fifteen minutes before polls opened—and there was a line “down the block,” she told me, lengthened by social distancing. A few dozen would-be voters were already queued up ahead of her. “People thought they didn’t have the correct number of machines again,” she said. As it turned out, there were more machines than two years ago—eight working machines, Thys believed, rather than the three on site in 2018. But they’re new machines, which require printing out completed paper ballots and placing them in a secured box. “They just didn’t have any of that paper that was supposed to be printed,” Thys said, “which is, like, half of the entire system meant to prevent election fraud.”