This is a simple tactic to take. If you don’t want to lose an election, then don’t let people vote. This is what is going on today, reported by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “Voters struggle with lines and equipment on election day in Georgia.”
Georgia House Speaker David Ralston has ordered an investigation of irregularities in Georgia’s primary election, particularly in Fulton County… Ralston said he heard of poll workers not being properly trained, voting equipment not working and absentee ballots not being received.
The AJC has a running log of election irregularities. Here are more excerpts showing numerous examples of voter suppression including malfunctioning machines, long lines, or undelivered or unprocessed absentee ballots and applications.
11:45 a.m.: 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. […]
Near the front of the line, 80-year-old Anita Heard had been waiting since around 6 a.m. to cast her ballot.
Never send the absentee ballots.
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.
Make voters wait hours in long lines.
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. […]
One voter who arrived at 6:45 a.m. said it took three and a half hours for him to cast his ballot.
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.
Use computerized polling machines that are unreliable and malfunction.
10:25 a.m.: Problems with Georgia’s new voting computers plagued the state’s primary election Tuesday, leading to lines and voters leaving without casting their ballots.
Poll workers said they had difficulties turning on voter check-in computers, encoding voter access cards and installing touchscreens.
“They told us none of the machines are working. The provisional ballots are long gone,” said Markisah Steele, a voter waiting at Cross Keys. “It tells me the elections are rigged. This is blatant voter suppression. How are these machines not working?”
9:10 a.m.: 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.
8:50 a.m.: 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.
7:30 a.m.: Selam Ghebru, 30, was the first voter at Best Friend Park in Gwinnett County on Tuesday morning. […]
She and her parents all applied for absentee ballots but never received them in the mail, so they all chose to vote in person.
7:20 a.m.: 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.
Candace Tucker, the first voter in line, said she arrived at 5:30 a.m. so she could vote in-person after her absentee ballot application wasn’t processed by Fulton County’s elections office.
The Washington Post reports, “In Georgia, primary day starts with long lines, problems with voting machines — a potential preview of November.”
“This seems to be happening throughout Atlanta and perhaps throughout the county. People have been in line since before 7:00 am this morning,” Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms tweeted barely 30 minutes after polls opened Tuesday.
She added: “If you are in line, PLEASE do not allow your vote to be suppressed. PLEASE stay in line. They should offer you a provisional ballot if the machines are not working.”
No doubt this voter suppression is intentional.
The difficulties quickly triggered partisan accusations about who was to blame, with a spokeswoman for Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) faulting officials in heavily Democratic Fulton County for failing to mail ballots in time and to properly train poll workers on the new type of voting machine. […]
Seth Bringman, a spokesman for former gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams’s voting-rights group Fair Fight Action, said some polling locations ran out of provisional ballots, needed because so many machines were out of order, within the first hour of voting. And while Raffensperger, Georgia’s top election official, had warned voters on the eve of Tuesday’s primaries to expect long lines and days-long delays for results, and blamed Fulton for the mailed ballot problems, Bringman said the buck stops with Raffensperger.
“He had primary responsibility to make sure today’s elections went well, and he failed,” Bringman said. Bringman noted that the problems are not limited to Fulton but also extend into surrounding counties. And he said Raffensperger, not local officials, chose the vendor responsible for mailing ballots.