State Representatives charged with investigating “problems and failures” that took place during Georgia’s June 9 Primary met for more than two hours Monday with state elections officials, looking for answers to what went wrong and what plans the Secretary of State has for avoiding a repeat in the November General Election.
At least one member of the Government Affairs Committee was obviously not happy that Georgia’s top elections official, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, stayed at the meeting for less than 30 minutes, leaving his staff to answer questions posed by the legislators.
“I would like to go on record saying that we would like more time with Secretary of State Raffensperger. I think that’s appropriate for the Government Affairs Committee during an investigation,” said House Minority Leader Bob Trammell (D-Luthersville). “I would like to point out that some voters waited in line for hours and the Secretary of State stayed here for 20 minutes.”
Speaker of the House David Ralston (R-Blue Ridge) ordered the investigation after voters faced hour-long wait times, closed precincts, equipment problems, and sometimes were not allowed to vote in the June Primary.
In Tuesday’s meeting, Raffensperger agreed that what took place on election day was “unacceptable” but added that the “issues we saw were related to process, not politics.” He went on to say 70 percent of the problems that day took place in Fulton County.
“Other counties had issues but they dealt with them,” said Raffensperger. “What happened there is unacceptable. Fulton County was an outlier and we are working with them to make sure these issues do not take place again.”
However, many on the committee argued that Fulton County was not the only county that had problems on election day.
“You keep saying this is a Fulton County issue. But we heard from many people last week that weren’t in Fulton County. It’s not going to be good enough for you to just keep saying it’s in Fulton County and not my issue,” said state Rep. Renitta Shannon (D-Decatur).
State Rep. Katie Dempsey (R-Rome) isn’t on the Government Affairs committee, but she waited more than two hours to share her personal story of voting problems to the committee members.
“We received multiple applications for absentee ballots in the mail, which I did not return. And I even received a ballot in the mail on June 4th,” said Dempsey. “A lot of strange things took place, and I think there is a lot of work to be done.”
Before leaving, Raffensperger said he and his staff were working on an improvement plan that focused on several key issues including more hands on training, increasing the number of polling places, utilizing larger polling places, recruiting more poll workers and ensuring the availability of more tech advisors at each polling location to assist with problems that arise.
When asked about his vision of partnerships with the county elections officials, Raffensperger said, “We have some great county elections officials across the state who have set great standard practices. We need to share those best practices.”
He added that training and re-training will be important to move forward.
State Elections Director Chris Harvey told the committee that the June 9 primary was “an election unlike any other. We had two elections postponed, we had to hold two elections at one time, and were losing poll workers. Yes, there were some problems. We’re working specifically on those problems with the folks that are responsible.”
Everyone seemed to agree that something must be done prior to the November General Election when 5 million voters are expected. That is more than double the 2.2 million turnout in the primary.
