The Fulton Board of Registration and Elections has changed a handful of precinct locations for the Aug. 11 runoff in hopes of avoiding another chaotic day at the polls.
In all, 10 precincts will differ from the June 9 primary election, when many voters waited in line nearly all day — some of whom were left with the only option to vote in person during a pandemic because they didn’t get their absentee ballots in time.
And as many as 500 poll workers did not show up on Election Day for fear of the virus.
Fulton County Elections chief Richard Barron explained the changes to board members on Monday, which was the first day of early voting for the runoff.
Many of the additional locations are libraries that had been closed in the spring as part of Fulton’s ambitious $275 million program to build nine libraries and renovate 23 others.
Credit: ALYSSA.POINTER@AJC.COM
Credit: ALYSSA.POINTER@AJC.COM
Technicians and poll workers will meet at precincts by 3 a.m. on Election Day to unseal the machines and ensure equipment works. The new voting machines were a problem for some poll workers in June because many were rapidly trained online due to the coronavirus.
Jessica Corbitt, a Fulton County spokeswoman, reviewed how and when the county plans to communicate all the changes with voters — down to when they will send email blasts to elected officials asking them to post elections information on social media.
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Another issue during the primary election was some precincts, including senior centers, were unwilling to host voters because of the virus. Fulton lost nearly a quarter of its roughly 200 precincts in two months. Barron said they usually lose that many precincts in two years. That forced Fulton, and other counties around the state, to squeeze precincts together.
It didn’t always work.
The most obvious example was Park Tavern, a restaurant and event space in the southeast corner Piedmont Park. As reported, when the Midtown precinct of Lutheran Church of the Redeemer dropped out of hosting elections, county staff combined two precincts that voted at the church with three other precincts assigned to Grady High School.
But when Election Day was moved to June 9 because of the pandemic, the school became unavailable due to renovations. So the 16,000 active registered voters for all five precincts were told to vote at Park Tavern, making it the largest polling place in Georgia with lines of people waiting to vote all day.
But with the Aug. 11 changes approved Monday, nearly 12,000 of those voters will now go to the Piedmont Park Magnolia Hall event space.
The August election isn’t expected to bring massive turnout, but it will give the county a chance to test all these lessons learned from June. The system needs to be much better by the November presidential election, which officials say could easily be the busiest election in Fulton’s history.
“We want to make improvements,” Corbitt said. “We want to see a better experience for voters and return to our best work.”
Credit: AJC
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