For starters – the pandemic.
Two people who process absentee ballots/voter registration in Fulton County tested positive for COVID-19. One died just before Easter. The other was out for a month to recover. @11AliveNews
Two people who process absentee ballots/voter registration in Fulton County tested positive for COVID-19. One died just before Easter. The other was out for a month to recover. @11AliveNews
@11AliveNews The day the employee died fro COVID-19, the Fulton elections office says it received 80,000 pieces of absentee ballot mail that day. For 6-9 days, they weren’t processing applications because of COVID-19 decontamination and being out of the office. @11AliveNews
@11AliveNews When they returned to the office April 21st, they had a ton of paper applications coming in. They went into catch up mode. The Fulton BOE was playing catch up until May 26th @11AliveNews
@11AliveNews Weeks before the election, they lost 45 precincts. 44 of 45 were related to COVID related.
Because COVID delayed election from May 19th to June 9th, they lost 6/7 precincts (schools) because they were now under renovation
Because COVID delayed election from May 19th to June 9th, they lost 6/7 precincts (schools) because they were now under renovation
@11AliveNews One of those schools is Grady High School. Fulton BOE had moved two precincts there because they lost a church and another precinct. But they found out a week ago Friday Grady would no longer be available because of renovations. They moved precinct to Park Tavern
@11AliveNews Fulton BOE had many senior centers, assisted living centers and churches slated to be precincts. Those places decided because of COVID-19 they didn’t want people in their facilities.
@11AliveNews The 45th location went up for sale. Fulton County was supposed to have 198 polling locations but today they have 164
@11AliveNews In Fulton County, 6 out of every 7 early voting poll worker declined to work because of COVID fears. The county lost entire precinct teams to same reason. There were several poll worker who pulled “No Shows” today – which is rare.
@11AliveNews Just yesterday, a poll worker who was setting up at Solid Rock Pentecostal Church got a call that he tested positive for COVID-19. They didn’t close the location but sent the poll worker home.
@11AliveNews Director says public health officials told them because poll worker had a mask, they could keep location open because risk of transmission was low. Note, poll worker was told to stay home.
@11AliveNews Fulton also lost another poll worker who tested positive. Didn't die. Just couldn't come in.
@11AliveNews Did Fulton test its new machines before today? Dir. says machines were tested but lots of power problems today. The machines are drawing "too much power off the circuit." Also, issues with poll pads encoders. Human error causing electronic issues, in some cases
@11AliveNews Part of the issue is poll worker error. Poll workers were trained in person from Jan-March. They did refreshers virtually but poll workers didn’t want to come in-person to train on the machines after March so they did video training.
@11AliveNews Again, this is all from the Fulton county BOE director. He says as a result, this is the first time since March many of the poll workers are actually using the machines with people in line = pressure, problems, delays.
@11AliveNews A majority, if not all, poll workers didn’t have in person training after March because of COVID-19 fears. Fulton would have lost a ton of poll workers had they required in-person training, the dir told me.
@11AliveNews Fulton County spent the morning trying to recover from issues at the polls. 5% of precincts opened late. They will go to court to ask for the to remain open late.
11% of precincts were still having equipment issues by late morning but with less severity.
11% of precincts were still having equipment issues by late morning but with less severity.
@11AliveNews I also asked the director to respond to the secretary of state blaming voting issues on county leadership.
@11AliveNews “Isn’t he the top elections official in the state? As counties, we all knew they would try to wash their hands of any responsibility for this […]. We were asked to turn into a 'ballot-by-mail' state overnight and we didn’t have the tools to do it”
@11AliveNews He says he spoke with other elections directors who feel state set the boards of elections up to fail. He feels there were special challenges. He appreciated that they sent out absentee ballot applications but thinks it created challenges for processing.
@11AliveNews So far, they have processed 143k applications. In 2016 gen primary they only received 947 absentee ballots. As of Sunday they received 85k – for normal presidential election 28-30k absentee ballots, according to Fulton BOE
@11AliveNews So what does all this mean in Fulton County? Long lines at the polls. Issues with voting because machines aren't working, some of the carriers aren't opening, lots of delays. They plan to bring in a consultant after the primary to review and recommend fixes.
@11AliveNews And now the state will launch an investigation into the issues in Fulton and other counties.
@11AliveNews Oh, also, not only did some poll workers not show but some showed up late. Viewers told us they waited and waited and eventually left because the polling location wasn't open.
@11AliveNews Here's a statement from Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger about the issues in Fulton and DeKalb. 
I also had a chat with @JoshforGeorgia about the issues in Fulton and the sec of state's response.
@JoshforGeorgia "This is not what a democracy should look like. This is not how elections should be run and what's unfortunate is you have the Secretary of State pointing at counties and blaming them and then you've got voters and counties asking Sec. of State, well, where's your oversight?"
@JoshforGeorgia Rep. McLaurin also adds: "The thing I'd like to stress is that, over a year ago, there was a debate in Georgia about whether it would be better for elections to have new voting machines or whether people should use hand-marked paper ballots to cast their votes..."
"...that proposal was rejected [...] The state legislature instead authorized the Secretary of State to buy these expensive ballot marking devices, which everybody's trying to figure out for the first time this year. And as you can see, there are lots of technical issues"
"I just believe that there could have been a lot better leadership from the Secretary of State's office, and it's imperative that that office shows better leadership for November, because if this happens again in November, it's a disaster for democracy in Georgia" @JoshforGeorgia
@JoshforGeorgia "Impractical right now to be using these machines. Only have 11 days left for the legislative sesh, it is imperative Georgia legislature take up some sort of emergency measure to facilitate voting in Nov. in way that's secure & allows people not to be stuck in these awful lines"
From our team: As of June 4th, a week from the statewide elections, Georgians had cast 1 million+ ballots. 810,024 were absentee by mail ballots - nearly 80% of the ballots cast by 6/4. The remainder were in person.
Also, the 800k absentee mail ballots was more than 20 times the 37k who voted that way in 2016
For those wondering, here's how SCOTUS defines #votersuppression "any effort, either legal or illegal, by way of laws, administrative rules, and/or tactics that prevents eligible voters from registering to vote or voting." -Supreme Court ruling in Shelby County v. Holder
Also in Fulton Co., at least one location didn’t have enough provisional ballots. Another location had a limited number of machine sets for voters to use. That location had four sets of machines (check in ipads, card reader, scanners, etc) but only three sets were working #GApol
So many statements from pols coming into our newsroom inbox. Among them, Carolyn Bourdeaux, who is running for Georgia's 7th congressional district seat, calling for Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to resign amid "shameful handling of the June 9th primary" #GApol
BREAKING: ALL FULTON COUNTY VOTING SITES TO REMAIN OPEN UNTIL 9 P.M. #GApol
This was the Louise Watley Library in southeast Atlanta, Fulton County earlier today.
Fulton Co says state “investigation” into the county’s voting issues is just “terminology that is used by the secretary of state’s office.” Says investigations are opened by SOS’s office every time there’s a voter compaint... (cont)
“whatever Sec. Raffensberger, his opinion is, it’s his opinion and his opinion alone and he can say whatever he wants. I disagree with him I think he’s the the head election official in the state & he can’t wash his hands of all the responsibility for this election” Fulton Co BOE
