Murphy’s law was in full force in Fulton County — the Georgia county containing much of Atlanta — as it prepared for its pandemic primary in June. Everything that could go wrong pretty much did.
Polls show GA may go blue. Wouldn’t it be lover-ly?
All of what is laid out in this article can happen pretty much in any state that doesn’t have VBM firmly established.
Some of what happened what technical, some of it was pandemic caused, and some of it seems to have been baked into the system.
And the reason why Fulton County got picked on was because who makes up a large part of the electorate, the state capitol is located there, and the metro Atlanta area is comprised of more than one county. It’s also easier to send reporters to Fulton County than to Chatham County.
Pollsters have not yet figured out how to screen for those who will be permiited to vote.
Fulton County got picked on – specifically by the incompetent Secretary of State – because it’s a dog-whistle for the rest of the state that means Black Democrats. Several other counties suffered long lines and other election day debacles but Brad Raffensperger only mentioned one county by name: Fulton.
This doesn’t address the fact that Fulton has large white populations in the north and black in the south, yet the majority black precincts had much longer wait times…substantially longer wait times with fewer voting booths, and fewer poll workers. The avg wait time in N Fulton to vote live was around 6 mins. It was 90mins in S. Fulton. Don’t let Fulton Co. off that easy. They are plenty to blame as well.
I’m not letting Fulton off the hook for whatever they failed to do correctly. But it is telling when Fulton was the only county to get the finger pointed at it when Muscogee, DeKalb, and Chatham counties all also had voting breakdowns.
Much of the problem was the half-assed YouTube training for the brand-new machines and voting system that Raffensperger procured and implemented. This deserved hands-on face-to-face instruction. Instead, volunteers were stuck trying to make unfamiliar technology work for the very first time in that primary.
I happen to live in Dekalb, and yes it took longer to get my ballot than I would of liked and it took about 10 days after I mailed it for it to show it was accepted. Fulton was much worse, and Dekalb has about the same population. Gwinnett Co is the most populous in the state. They all had delays, but in this case, Fulton deserves some of the blame.
The sad truth is that the only way to ensure our votes are counted is to vote early or on Election Day. The sad truth is that we cannot trust Mail-In ballots to get back on time unless we take them to an election office or a drop box. And if they do get back in time, they’re a lot more likely to be rejected because of signature verification issues.
If you’re young and healthy enough, get some PPE and volunteer to be an election worker. If there aren’t enough workers, polling places will close which will cause long lines and voters to leave.
If it’s too risky to vote in person and you have to Vote by Mail/ absentee, make sure your signature matches the one on your Driver’s license because that’s usually what election workers compare the signature on absentee ballots to. And deliver your ballot to your local election office in order to make sure it doesn’t get lost in the mail.
Long lines, low staff to assist with problems, broken machines, etc., in a state that has a long and very public history of voter suppression by Republicans and we’re still blaming “Murphy’s law” ?
That’s just an indication that the system is working as intended, the rest of it was problematic but the long lines, fewer machines, and other delays in non-white precincts is a feature of Republican election management. Really, we need an election law that fixes the required number of ballot stations per capita, so that the long lines in non-white districts goes away…it’s a stain on our democracy that in every election long lines of people in Democratic, non-white districts are featured on the news and nothing is ever done to fix the problem.
what Kemp did to Abrams was a crime.
Actually… (sorry for actuallying), disenfranchising voters via secretary of state decisions is not a crime. That is something that needs to be addressed next time we have house, senate, and exec.