Long Lines, Delayed Voting At A Precinct In Georgia
Reports came in Tuesday morning from Gwinnett County, east of Atlanta, that voters were encountering hours of delays in some precincts.
Gwinnett County spokesman Joe Sorenson said that five voting locations had experienced trouble, out of a total of 156 in the county.
“One opened about ½ hour late,” he wrote in a message to TPM. “All of the voting precincts that have had issues this morning have been able to process voters.”
Gwinnett County drew attention from voting rights groups in October after state figures showed that the county had rejected nearly one in 10 absentee voter ballots, throwing them out because of allegedly “mismatched” signatures, home addresses, or over failure to complete the necessary forms.
The worst of Tuesday’s snafu appeared to occur at Anderson-Livsey elementary school. A lack of power cords at the precinct meant that voting machines ran out of battery, causing hours-long waits.
A video posted on Twitter from the location showed a long line of voters snaking through the school’s hallway.
Other issues in the county stemmed from programming problems involving Express Poll, which shut down touch-screen voting across four separate precincts.
Sorenson said that one precinct had opened around half an hour late in Snellville, due to polling workers failing to hand out paper ballots while the machines were malfunctioning.
A court order was issued extending the precinct’s operating time by 25 minutes.
In a hastily arranged press conference in Snellville, local Democrats told voters to rely on provisional ballots if they were unable to use machines.
Georgia elections have come under heavy scrutiny this cycle thanks to its current Secretary of State and gubernatorial candidate Brian Kemp, who has been
accused of
using his position in government in his race against Stacey Abrams.
