National: Georgia shows why November’s election could be chaos | Timothy B. Lee/Ars Technica
There’s broad agreement that last week’s primary election in Georgia was a fiasco, with voters reportedly waiting as long as five hours to cast a ballot. Democrats accused Georgia Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger of bungling the statewide rollout of new election technology. Some went further, suggesting that the problems—which were most severe in Democratic areas—were a deliberate Republican strategy. “What happened in Georgia yesterday was by design,” former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton tweeted last Wednesday. “Voter suppression is a threat to our democracy.” Republicans have responded by blaming officials in Democratic-leaning urban counties where the problems were the worst. County officials in Georgia are responsible for many day-to-day details of an election, including selecting polling places and recruiting poll workers. Raffensperger singled out officials in Fulton and DeKalb Counties—liberal jurisdictions in the heart of the Atlanta metro area. “Every other county faced these same issues and were significantly better prepared to respond so that voters had every opportunity to vote,” Raffensperger wrote in an election-day statement.
