![]() About two weeks before the primary, Fulton County election officials were scrambling to tackle a backlog of about 25,000 ballot applications. Some voters said they didn’t get their absentee ballot on time and headed to vote in person that contributed to the lines. The June 9 absentee-vote numbers were about a five-fold increase from the November 2016 election. More than 1.1 million ballots were cast absentee - compared with about 37,000 during the 2016 general primary. Local election officials weren’t prepared for the mail onslaught. The vast majority of Georgia voters had voted in person in the past - only about 5% voted by mail in the 20 general elections. Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced in March that he was sending absentee ballot request forms to all voters for the primary. Total turnout, absentee ballots, and early voting all set records, according to the Secretary of State’s office. ![]() Georgia’s June 9 election shattered records for primary turnout with more than 2.2 million ballots cast. RELATED: Voting Counts: How Kentucky’s June primary election turned out Here we will look back at what went wrong in the primary and what changes are underway for the Nov. Any election problems draw scrutiny in Georgia, a state that has faced criticism for years about how policies such as voter-list purges, polling closures or long lines affect voters, especially Black voters. Democrat Stacey Abrams’ narrow loss in the 2018 governor’s race shows that the state could be in play for Democrats this year including in two competitive U.S. Voter access in Georgia has drawn national attention because of the state’s changing demographics. The combination of new equipment, enthusiastic turnout, COVID-19 risks at polling sites, and insufficient poll workers that marred Georgia’s primary could recur in November. In Wisconsin, a masked voter in line to vote held up a sign saying "This is ridiculous," and became a national symbol of the pandemic-year voting chaos.īut Georgia’s struggles were particularly glaring, and they serve as an omen of what could go wrong on Nov. Nationally, election officials have faced the unprecedented challenges of handling increased voting by mail and creating COVID-safe in-person voting sites this year. When it was over, state and county officials pointed the finger at each other, lawmakers launched investigations and Democrats sued state and county election officials. ![]() Some counties had fewer polling locations than originally planned or had to relocate polling locations. Poll workers struggled to use new equipment. County officials were swamped with mail-in ballots. The headline in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution summed up Georgia’s June 9 primary in two words: "Complete meltdown." ![]()
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