Congressional election redos costly, confusing

In Lumpkin County, some voters who thought they had cast ballots for the special election runoff were irritated when they showed up at the polls Tuesday and were told they had actually voted early for that day’s primary, said Kimberly Pruitt, the county’s elections supervisor and chief registrar.

Gordon Benson, a retired computer salesman from Dahlonega, was among the irritated voters. After voting in the May 11 special election, he said, he attempted to vote in the June 8 runoff but actually voted early for Tuesday's primary. He said he probably will vote in the Aug. 10 runoff.

"It is poor planning on somebody's part, or bad rules. I'm not sure what it is," Benson said about the multiple elections. "It is ridiculous to do that. Those things are expensive for the little county I live in."

Tuesday’s primary would have happened with or without the 9th District race since there were other contests on the ballot. Ditto for the Aug. 10 runoff.

In Forsyth County alone, the costs for the four elections related to the 9th District are estimated to be between $180,000 and $200,000, including Tuesday’s primary and the Aug. 10 runoff. That covers election worker salaries, ballot printing, supplies and other costs. In Hall County, the most populous of the 15 counties represented in whole or in part in the district, the bill is expected to top $100,000.

Those extra costs are especially burdensome amid the recession. Lumpkin, for example, must divert $16,230 it had saved up for new voting equipment to cover most of the costs of the first two congressional elections. And it still must find $9,065 more to cover the rest of those unexpected election expenses from May and June.

Meanwhile, several county election chiefs in North Georgia said they don’t recall another time when the same congressional seat appeared on the ballot four months in a row.

“You know what, I have been in elections 21 years, and I do not recall seeing a particular office on a ballot as many times as we have this year,” said Charlotte Sosebee, Hall’s interim elections director. “I have had questions from other reporters: ‘Do you think the voters are getting bored?’ And they could be.”

Pruitt, Sosebee and Barbara Luth, Forsyth’s elections chief, said they disagreed with Perdue’s decision to hold the initial special election on May 11 to fill Deal's unexpired term.

Perdue, local election chiefs said, should have instead set the special election for Tuesday night, when voters were already scheduled to cast ballots in the primaries. Voters would have picked someone to serve out the rest of Deal’s unexpired term and someone to serve the next term in office, all on the same day. That would have saved taxpayer money, the election officials said.

A spokesman for Perdue, however, said that scenario would have been even more confusing for voters. Plus, the governor worried what would have happened if two runoffs were necessary in that case. State law at the time would have required officials to hold such a primary runoff on Aug. 10 and a special election runoff on Aug. 17.

“We felt like three elections within four weeks of each other would have been even more confusing than having to go four different times,” said Perdue spokesman Bert Brantley.

Brantley pointed out that the counties must hold the Aug. 10 runoff anyway because of the runoffs required in other statewide races, including the one between Deal and Karen Handel in the GOP primary for governor.

“I don’t think the cost factor is nearly as high as what some are making it out to be,” Brantley said.

But just the May 11 and June 8 elections alone cost Hall and Forsyth counties combined an estimated $160,000.

Perdue also called the special election for Deal’s seat in May because he wanted 9th District residents to have some representation in Congress as soon as possible, Brantley said.

Just last month, Perdue signed a bill into law that requires election officials to hold primary and special election runoffs on the same day if the initial elections that triggered them were held on the same day. But that law didn’t go into effect until July 1 -- too late to prevent the costs and confusion in North Georgia.

Hawkins said he sympathizes with the counties bearing the costs for the 9th District elections, but he stressed the importance of upholding voting rights. A spokesman for Graves said, "We are just following the way the cards were dealt to us. We have to do what we have to do to win this seat."

The 9th Congressional District

The district includes parts of Forsyth and Gordon counties, as well as all of Catoosa, Dade, Dawson, Fannin, Gilmer, Hall, Lumpkin, Murray, Pickens, Union, Walker, White and Whitfield counties.