Voters at College Park’s library precinct waited more than six hours to cast ballots on a sometimes rainy Friday as in-person early voting came to a close, an indication that Georgia’s new ballot-marking equipment will be put to the test Tuesday under COVID-19 safety precautions that were not part of the plan.
The line stretched out longer than it might have before the pandemic, with many voters observing six-foot social distancing guidelines. But social distancing was difficult in the small library space where the voting equipment was wiped between each use and masks sometimes muffled communications.
Andrea Turner-Gray said as she exited the library Friday afternoon after more than six hours in line she worries about what the scene will look like in College Park and across Georgia when turnout spikes run into social distancing requirements on primary Election Day and possibly beyond.
“What is it going to be like on Tuesday and to be when we really get to the final elections?” she wondered. “We’re actually spaced out in the line, but it’s a small voting center. They have people spaced out, but it’s small.”
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It wasn’t supposed to happen this way, even with the complications of holding an election during the spread of the novel coronavirus. Georgia’s Secretary of State started urging voters weeks ago to request mail-in ballots for a primary that’s been delayed twice. About 1.6 million absentee ballots were requested and about half haven’t been returned yet. Georgia voters cast about 1 million ballots as of late last week, so the shift to mail is working for many.
Some Georgia voters say they just trust their votes are more certain to be counted with an in-person voting machine instead of arriving at their county elections office via envelope. But many voters say their ballot requests weren’t answered in time by their county elections office.
Macon’s Lynne Bryan planned to mail in her absentee ballot for Tuesday’s election after anall-out vote-by-mail campaign from state election officials.
Yet, the 77-year-old Bryan reluctantly voted in person Friday, still waiting on her absentee ballot to arrive in her mailbox.
Bryan’s age qualifies her as among the people most vulnerable to the disease caused by the novel coronavirus that has claimed the lives of more than 110,000 Americans.
So when Bryan arrived at the Bibb County elections office Friday, she kept a watchful eye to make sure poll workers followed social distancing and sanitizing guidelines to keep themselves and voters as safe as possible from infection.
As a rule, people maintained a six-foot buffer between one another, with people wearing masks and otherwise following safety precautions.
“I think we have a really important election right now, and I think everyone’s voice needs to be heard, so I wanted to get my vote in,” Bryan said. “If I had felt threatened by the way things were set up, I might not have voted.”
Tuesday, many Georgia voters will get their first up-close look at the state’s new $104 million voting system, featuring large touchscreen tablets, scanners and printers that take up significantly more space than the old equipment used since 2002. Some early voting precincts configured voting kiosks in a way that made social distancing difficult without underusing the available machines.
‘Results in disenfranchising voters’
Meanwhile, 10% of polling locations are relocated or closed for this election, the result of fewer poll workers who tend to be older and vulnerable to COVID-19. Also, churches and schools that typically serve as neighborhood precincts remain closed as Georgia’s COVID-19 spread is slowed but still continues. Fulton County elections officials, who operate the College Park library precinct, over the weekend called for 250 more people to work at the polls Tuesday.
The library also offers an absentee ballot drop-box to voters who have their form in hand and want to avoid the long lines, something other county elections offices are also allowed after the State Election Board voted in April to allow that option.
The Democratic Party of Georgia says a lack of adequate voting equipment and the need for privacy at precincts and social distancing due to the pandemic are combining to put Georgia’s in-person primary voters in a squeeze.
“Between the extra space required to maintain privacy for voters, and the distance between polling booths required to maintain social distancing, counties are only setting up a small number of voting machines in polling stations,” party spokeswoman Maggie Chambers said in an email. “This is simply unacceptable, and results in disenfranchising voters.”
In Fulton County, announcements about relocated precincts came in the form of notices and signs telling regular voters they will be assigned to a different polling place Tuesday than they’re used to.
“We can get equipment into all those locations, but there will be more people assigned to some of those Election Day sites than we normally have,” Elections Director Richard Barron said on May 27, nine days after early voting started and before last week’s lines to vote grew dramatically. “It is going to be a challenge with the restrictions on physical distance to allow for all of those people to go to all those places.”
Several of Lowndes County’s 11 polling locations in south Georgia will not be open on Tuesday.
“All of those (voters) will be redirected into our office to vote,” Election Supervisor Deb Cox said. “This will become their polling place and this one is well-staffed so we should be pretty good.”
Lowndes election staff and poll workers are following the cleaning and safety standards to keep voters safe and the required number of voting machines will be in place, but with the caveat that some will be turned off to start with.
“What we’re telling the poll managers to do is turn off or don’t turn on every other machine so it enforces that six-foot rule, but the equipment is there if we need extra,” Cox said.
Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger mailed out 6.9 million absentee ballot applicationsthis spring. By Friday, a record 847,000 Georgians turned in absentee ballots while a few hundred thousand people took part in early voting. In the presidential election cycle this time four years ago, about 250,000 Georgia voters cast ballots early.
County elections officials are struggling to consolidate polling locations and meet social distancing guidelines since the early in-person voting started May 18, Raffensperer said. In Cobb County, for example, the number of ballot marking devices decreased by more than half at one early voting site because of social distancing, he said.
“I think we’re the only state in the union that has maintained all three voting options: no-excuse absentee voting, three weeks of early voting and Election Day,” Raffensperger said.
So with those other options available, why did Turner-Gray slog through a six-hour wait in line to vote in College Park Friday?
“I’m frankly concerned that if I put it in by mail that it’s going to disappear,” she said. “So I wanted to show up in person.”
And it wasn’t lost on Erick Malveaux as he finally reached the library’s precinct entrance that the long lines at the College Park precinct are coming at a time when the cause of racial justice is on a lot of minds as Friday marked a week since protests against police brutality against black people in general and George Floyd in particular spread across Georgia and the country.
“It’s kind of perplexing to see that they chose to have such limited resources, especially at a location like here with so many different people, especially a lot of minorities in line in times like this with this political climate,” Malveaux said. “It’s very, very interesting that this was done this way.”
Photo Credit: Voters spent six hours in line Friday to reach this entrance to the College Park library precinct. People said the room with the voting machines is small and social distancing is challenging. People with absentee ballots can avoid the wait by using the drop box. John McCosh/Georgia Recorder
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