So much of this shit is just inexcusable. Poll workers should be properly trained. Plenty of provisional ballots should be available.The primary launches Georgia's new voting equipment, which adds a paper ballot backup to the state's voting process for the first time in 18 years. The $104 million voting system features touchscreens attached to printers that create paper ballots.
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About 300 voters lined up at Park Tavern in Piedmont Park, preparing for a significant wait to vote. Many voters said they requested absentee ballots but never received them.
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Selam Ghebru, 30, was the first voter at Best Friend Park in Gwinnett County on Tuesday morning.
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She and her parents all applied for absentee ballots but never received them in the mail, so they all chose to vote in person.
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Problems with voting machines slowed down voters at the C.T. Martin Natatorium and Recreation Center in the Adamsville neighborhood of Atlanta.
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Bernice Smith, 78, showed up in a mask at C. T. Nanatorium around 6 a.m. to vote and was among the first in line. She finally voted and left just before 8 a.m.
Smith said voting on the new machines was “terrible.”
She was given a paper ballot, but then the machines started again.
“It started working again, it stopped working,” she said.
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Precincts opened late at several voting locations in Cobb, DeKalb and Fulton counties.
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Some voting locations struggled to start new voting computers, including touchscreens and voting check-in computers, the group said. Other precincts didn’t receive equipment they needed until well after polls were supposed to open.
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All eight voting machines at Stephenson High School in Stone Mountain are down.
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State Rep. William Boddie says Fulton County is in a “complete meltdown.”
“My phone hasn’t stopped ringing. We’re having issues throughout the county,” said the East Point Democrat. “Did they not know this was going to be a voting day for months? Fulton County’s Board of Elections can’t be let off the hook this time. It’s inexcusable.”
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Fulton elections head Richard Barron has said there will be one tech for every three precinct to help fix issues like this on election day. This precinct has 2,895 registered voters.
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Several precincts in Gwinnett County had few voting machines, leaving voters waiting with no end in sight, said state Rep. Jasmine Clark.
“Voters are livid or leaving. Voters are being asked to vote provisional but are not being reassured that their vote will be counted tonight if they do,” Clark said.
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Long lines during early voting forced Samuel Obukwelu, 44, and his wife to vote Tuesday.
They tried to vote three times before election day, at Garden Hills Elementary School and Sandy Springs Public Library, but the waits were extensive each time.
On Tuesday, it took them 40 minutes to vote at Peachtree Presbyterian Church.
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A poll worker told voters waiting in line at the Hoyt Smith Recreation Center that voting machines were delivered to the wrong address, said Melanie Foster of Hapeville.
Foster said she got in line at 7:25 a.m. and was still waiting more than an hour and a half later.
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Voters were having to rely on paper provisional ballots in some precincts where voting machines weren’t working.
But some polling places, like Cross Keys High, ran out of provisional ballots.
“We are having technical issues and we don’t have access to any provisional ballots. I can’t give anyone here an ETA on when they can vote,” said Jonathan Banes, the precinct manager.
Barnes said the precinct had less than two dozen provisional ballots to hand out.
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In the time of COVID-19, [Leondra Martin] said she didn’t feel comfortable licking the provisional ballot, but she had to do her civic duty.
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At the Sandtown Recreation Center, voting machines weren’t working.
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Poll workers said they had difficulties turning on voter check-in computers, encoding voter access cards and installing touchscreens.
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Fulton County Commissioner Liz Hausmann said it took her 2 hours and 40 minutes on Tuesday morning to vote at the Johns Creek Environmental Campus
She said she’d never seen a line so long — even for a presidential election.
Hausmann said poll workers called for technical help but weren’t able to get through. A long-time poll manager couldn’t figure out how to insert the cards that record votes into the machines, she said.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Twelve provisional ballots. Twenty provisional ballots. Unfuckingbelievable.A person with a “medical emergency” drove into a line of people waiting to vote at Bethesda United Methodist Church in Lawrenceville around 9 a.m.
One person was injured, and the building sustained minor damage.
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About 200 people were already in line when Joe Chiarella, 39, of Atlanta’s Grant Park neighborhood arrived at Parkside Elementary School at 7 a.m. He was still in line at 10:30 a.m.
Poll workers did not tell him why the wait was so long, Chiarella said.
One voter who arrived at 6:45 a.m. said it took three and a half hours for him to cast his ballot.
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Confusion surrounded the voting process at Barack Obama Elementary School in South Dekalb’s Gresham Park, said Jennifer Aton, 32.
Alton arrived at 6:50 a.m. because she never received the absentee ballot she requested.
Her voting precinct had moved from a nearby church to the school, where voters were supposed to stand in two separate lines to different rooms based on their neighborhood. But poll workers did not tell voters there were two lines, and few paid attention to small posters telling them where to stand.
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By the time Alton got to the gym where she was to vote, she spotted seven people off to the side who did not want to leave. They said their votes did not go through.
“Nobody wanted to leave but no one could figure out what to do with them,” Alton said.
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At Cross Keys High School, volunteers passed out water bottles to a crowd of 100 voters lined up for hours outside the building.
Countless others left the line snaked around the building or never joined at all, as word spread the machines weren’t working and the precinct quickly ran out of the 20 provisional ballots.
Jonathan Banes, the precinct manager, said he’s tried repeatedly to troubleshoot the equipment but his PIN number won’t work. He pleaded with DeKalb elections officials for technical assistance and more provisional ballots.
At least maybe they'll get it straightened out for November.Danielle Johnston, 30, had to wait for three hours and 45 minutes to cast her ballot at Parkside Elementary School precinct in Fulton County. She said the line did not move at all for at least 40 minutes, and after about an hour and a half, voters passed down that machines weren’t working.
When she finally reached the front of the line, Johnston said that the precinct had eight machines and one scanner. Only 103 people had voted in the nearly four hours before her. Johnston said poll workers never communicated with the voters in line, and that she was not offered a provisional ballot.
“This is insulting to our constitutional right to vote,” she said. “I don’t know what their excuse is this time.”
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Anderson-Livsey Elementary School had a 47-minute delay this morning due to issues with machines, a poll worker confirmed. But by 11:30, it was smooth sailing at the polling place where lines stretched for four hours in 2018.
Stella Rowland, 50, was ready for a long line and was pleasantly surprised when she didn’t find one. She even called her brother and told him to come down to vote with her; he had applied for an absentee ballot but never received it, Rowland said.
“I thought I was going to see a whole big line but the process was fast, in and out in and out,” Rowland said. “I appreciate the social distancing measures. They have gloves and hand sanitizer and everything you need. The safety of the public is paramount.”
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Georgia House Speaker David Ralston has ordered an investigation of irregularities in Georgia’s primary election, particularly in Fulton County.
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Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office said problems with voting equipment were caused by poll workers’ mistakes.
“So far we have no reports of any actual equipment issues,” said Gabriel Sterling, statewide implementation manager for the voting system. “We have reports of poll workers not understanding setup or how to operate voting equipment. While these are unfortunate, they are not issues of the equipment but a function of counties engaging in poor planning, limited training and failures of leadership.”
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“Obviously, the first time a new voting system is used there is going to be a learning curve, and voting in a pandemic only increased these difficulties,” he said. “But every other county faced these same issues and were significantly better prepared to respond so that voters had every opportunity to vote."
Some local officials say the secretary of state bears responsibility.
Steve Bradhsaw, the DeKalb commission's presiding officer, called the voting issues "a disgrace." Like many of his colleagues, he balked at the secretary of state's office blaming the problems on counties.
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A civil rights group is calling for polls to stay open late in metro Atlanta's four core counties after voters faced difficulties earlier in the day.
The Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law threatened to go to court Tuesday if officials in Cobb, DeKalb, Fulton and Gwinnett counties don't hold precincts open.
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