“I’ve been voting there for years,” said the 73-year-old. But she and two of her neighbors found that they were no longer on the voting list in that district. And because Georgia’s new electoral law prohibits most voters from voting outside of their polling stations, the older trio took another route – this time to the right polling station in a small neighborhood library to vote in the city’s mayoral election.
Dossie, a Democrat, said she had no idea how to look up her polling station online. And she views the law changes as Republican retaliation for Joe Biden’s victory last year when he became the first Democrat to win Georgia in nearly three decades. “So many have chosen Biden and I think that’s their way of preventing us from voting,” she said. “That is not right.”
In Georgia, voters like Dossie learned firsthand about some of the implications of new election restrictions Tuesday in the first election since the bill was passed in March.
Tuesday’s low-key local elections provided an opportunity for voting activists to try new tactics as they search for ways to manage the law’s restrictions ahead of next year’s high-stakes battles and the 2024 presidential contest. Next year the Georgians will elect a governor and determine the future of the seat now held by Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock and possibly determine which party will control the US Senate after the midterm elections.
“We’re testing the whole process,” said Stephanie Ali, political director of the New Georgia Project, a voter advocacy group, “because if that turnout is increased tenfold, the problems will be much bigger.”
Tuesday’s election was also a test for people running local elections. Another test of the Fulton County’s system is approaching: a runoff election for the election of the next Atlanta mayor is scheduled for November 30th.
Georgia is one of 19 states to put new voting restrictions in place this year, according to the Brennan Center for Justice – amid efforts by Republican-controlled lawmakers to tighten voting rules. Former President Donald Trump has called for the changes as he falsely claims that widespread fraud contributed to his loss last year.
Election experiments
Georgia was the president’s first battlefield to bundle his new voting rules into a comprehensive omnibus package that changed a number of practices. Among other things, the law establishes new identification requirements for postal voting, reduces the number of ballot boxes in densely populated areas such as Atlanta, and restricts the use of temporary ballot papers so that people who turn up in the wrong places can still count their votes.
Temporary ballots are now restricted to voters who arrive at the wrong polling station after 5 p.m. They are also required to sign affidavits explaining why they cannot vote in their home district before polling stations close.
Throwing most of the votes outside of the district could make a big difference in a tight competition.
For example, in 2020 more than two-thirds of the 3,600+ provisional ballots accepted in Fulton County alone were from people who voted in the wrong counties. Biden won the state by less than 12,000 votes.
Georgia law also makes it a crime to deliver snacks or water to voters while they stand in line.
On Tuesday, New Georgia Project workers spent the day testing ways to encourage voting without breaking the law. They paid musicians to run a “Party at the Polls” program to entertain waiting voters. They gave voters like Dossie free travel to the polling stations.
And outside a polling station – in a Baptist church in the east of the city – a volunteer and a member of the New Georgia Project teamed up to offer the voters water and coffee. They did so from a table across the street, at the urging of the polling officer who ran the polling station. That even took them beyond the 50-foot buffer zone that the law establishes.
Back at the group’s headquarters, Aklima Khondoker, Chief Legal Officer of the New Georgia Project, videoconferenced “voter protection” volunteers on how to report irregularities at polling stations.
Ali, the political director, said the organization had started discussions with local officials about identified issues. And after Tuesday’s experience, the company was already considering how to convert its operations. Changes could include training volunteer drivers to use a mobile app that helps voters find their polling stations, she said.
Fulton County in the spotlight
In Fulton County, the largest Democratic county in Georgia, officials said the local elections were relatively smooth. Fulton’s record shows that just over 168,000 of the county’s nearly 790,000 voters cast their votes on Tuesday. The county is threatened with the adoption of its electoral system by state officials who are conducting a performance review. The new electoral law allows for such reviews, and it could trigger the dismissal of the local electoral committee and allow Republican officials to establish a new electoral authority in the county, which includes much of Atlanta.
And on Wednesday, district election chief Richard Barron announced his resignation after a tumultuous year marked by personal threats and allegations of electoral fraud.
Fulton’s election operations have been under close scrutiny for years.
Officials monitored a June 2020 area code that was plagued by long voting lines and complaints that voters had not received their postal ballot papers in the mail. The voting process has improved with the 2020 general election and this year’s runoff elections for the US Senate.
But last month two Fulton County employees were sacked for allegedly tearing up voter registration forms, fueling the Republican-led investigation into the office.
Nonetheless, election officials reported short queues and few technical breakdowns on Tuesday. At two polling stations, for example, technicians did not show up with tablets to check-in voters Tuesday morning, forcing the use of paper-note votes, Barron told CNN. He said these polls were still opened on time.
“This has been a good day for us,” Rob Pitts, chairman of the Fulton County’s Board of Commissioners, told reporters Tuesday night in the cave-like warehouse where county workers cast their votes.
Members of the state audit committee were closely monitoring operations Tuesday, including working with Barron at the county call center, when officials received complaints.
Election officials and activists said it was difficult to determine why some voters went to the wrong constituencies on Tuesday. Some polling stations that were in use during the peak of the pandemic last year were no longer available for this week’s elections, Barron said. About 16 polling stations have changed, he added.
In about 20 minutes, four voters showed up at an Atlanta library to vote on Tuesday afternoon, but were turned away and directed to other polling stations. Barron said the website was used as a place for early voting, which may have created confusion.
One of those residents, Greg Smith, said he voted in the 2020 general election and this year’s Senate sample in the library. He said it was inconvenient to go to a second location, but he had a day off and had time to travel to the new polling station.
There is little evidence that the limelight is waning on Fulton County.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who drew Trump’s anger after rejecting the then-president’s post-election request to find the votes to undo Trump’s loss in the state, has criticized a provision in the new law that disrupted him a member of the state election committee submitted as a voter.
But Raffensperger – facing a major Republican challenge from a Trump-backed candidate, Rep. Jody Hice – stands by many of the law’s new measures, including increased scrutiny of Fulton County’s operations. He recently called for an investigation by the US Department of Justice into the destroyed registration forms. His office is also investigating the incident.
“The 2020 primaries were likely the trigger for the General Assembly to say, ‘Enough is enough,'” he told CNN when it came to Fulton County. “Someone has to have the power to replace a failing district electoral committee.”
In an interview with CNN, Pitts criticized the attacks as politically motivated and said they would persist no matter how much Fulton County improved its performance.
“This is only about 2022 and 2024,” he said. “They are massively attacking our voters because they are determined never to let a democrat win the state again. And we will fight them with all possible means.”
