WASHINGTON (US) – It was a chaotic day of in-person balloting in Georgia, the latest US state to conduct elections amid the coronavirus scare, on Tuesday with voters encountering long queues and faulty voting machines.
Both Republicans and Democrats blamed each other for the difficulties and Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said his office would conduct a probe into problems in two counties that are Democratic strongholds in an effort to resolve the issues before the November general election.
Georgia’s missteps in Georgia, which had delayed its primary from March, are likely to trigger alarm bells about how well states can handle voting if the coronavirus is still raging when Republican President Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden meet in the Nov. 3 presidential election.
There were several complaints of hours-long waits and malfunctioning voting machines and according to Raffensperger, the problems were most acute in metropolitan Atlanta’s Fulton and DeKalb counties. On the other hand, Georgia Democratic Party said it received reports of problems “in every corner of the state”.
Local news reports stated there were long queues in some polling locations in Atlanta at midnight.
The primary witnessed the first use of Georgia’s new voting equipment, which added a paper ballot backup. Officials stated that there were reports of some locations struggling to start the machines, delay in receiving the equipment and insufficient training for poll workers to properly handle the equipment.
“I waited for three hours,” said Callie Orsini, 26, who stood in line with hundreds of others in Atlanta’s Midtown neighbourhood on Tuesday. She said some of the voters had requested absentee ballots but had not received them, and it took longer for poll officials to process them.
Following the shortage of election workers owing to the coronavirus outbreak, polling locations were reduced in many counties. About 1 million Georgians opted for postal vote, Raffensperger’s office said, and another 325,000 already had cast ballots in person during early voting.
Raffensperger, who sent absentee ballot request forms to the state’s 6.9 million active voters, termed the voting situation in parts of Fulton and DeKalb counties “unacceptable” and initiated a probe.
“We knew it would be challenging to vote in a pandemic, but most counties were able to handle it very smoothly,” he told Reuters. “Fulton County obviously had problems, and the issues they had fall on the county administrators,” he added.
But Democrats put the blame on Raffensperger.
“If there was a failure of leadership, it starts where the buck should stop, at the top,” said DeKalb County CEO Michael Thurmond, a Democrat who called for an investigation of Raffensperger’s office.
“It is the Secretary of State’s responsibility to train, prepare, and equip election staff throughout the state to ensure fair and equal access to the ballot box,” he said.
According to voting rights groups, the experience was particularly difficult in areas having low-income and minority neighbourhoods, and they are apprehensive that thousands of voters might have been disenfranchised.
“This election has been a catastrophe,” said Kristen Clarke, president of the National Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.
There were similar complaints and confusion during an April primary in Wisconsin, and last week in Pennsylvania, Indiana and Washington DC.
Georgia was one of five states choosing candidates for the White House and Congress on Tuesday. Voters in Nevada, South Carolina, North Dakota and West Virginia also held primaries.
Early on Wednesday, Jon Ossoff, 33, led a large field of Georgia Democrats in early results in the race for the party’s nomination to take on Republican Senator David Perdue.
Ossoff contested with six Democrats, but with 93% of precincts counted at midnight, he was just short of the 50% of the votes needed to avoid an Aug. 11 runoff for the nomination. Perdue has no primary challengers.
(Photos syndicated via Reuters)
This story has been edited by BH staff and is published from a syndicated field