It was like a Republican dream: Minority voters, stuck in lines for hours, having a difficult time casting their ballots on election day.
Hourslong waits, problems with new voting machines and a lack of available ballots plagued voters in majority minority counties in Georgia on Tuesday — conditions the secretary of state called “unacceptable” and vowed to investigate.
Democrats and election watchers said voting issues in a state that has been plagued for years by similar problems, along with allegations of racial bias, didn’t bode well for the November presidential election, when Georgia could be in play.
“This seems to be happening throughout Atlanta and perhaps throughout the county. People have been in line since before 7:00 am this morning,” Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, a Democrat, tweeted shortly after polls were supposed to open — and in some cases still hadn’t.
Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, said the problems “in certain precincts” in Fulton and DeKalb counties were “unacceptable.”
“My office has opened an investigation to determine what these counties need to do to resolve these issues before November’s election,” he said in a statement.
Voting problems in the state also plagued Fulton County in 2018, which led to allegations of voter suppression by Democrats.
The secretary of state at the time was Brian Kemp, a Republican, who wound up winning the governorship by a thin margin against Democrat Stacey Abrams. Abrams at the time called the election “rotten and rigged.”
She tweeted Tuesday that “Georgians deserve better.”
“From Jasper to Fulton to Coffee & Chatham, long lines, inoperable machines & under-resourced communities are being hurt,” Abrams wrote, adding that Raffensperger “owns this disaster.”
“He must stop finger-pointing and fix it,” she said.
Democrats have targeted Georgia — which has added 700,000 registered voters to the rolls since 2018 — as a possible swing state in November.
Rachana Desai Martin, the national director of voter protection for Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, said that what happened Tuesday is “unacceptable” and noted that many voters reported asking for — and never receiving — absentee ballots.
DeKalb County CEO Michael Thurmond blamed Tuesday’s issues on Raffensperger, who Thurmond said should be investigated by the governor’s office.
“It is the secretary of state’s responsibility to train, prepare and equip election staff throughout the state to ensure fair and equal access to the ballot box. Those Georgians who have been disenfranchised by the statewide chaos that has affected the voting system today in numerous DeKalb precincts and throughout the state of Georgia deserve answers,” Thurmond said.
Kristen Clarke, president and CEO of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a civil rights group, called the election “a catastrophe.”
“If we view the primary election as a dry run for November, then Georgia gets an F today,” Clarke said.
She said her group has been flooded with calls from “voters who encountered barriers from polling sites that are not open on time, malfunctioning equipment, long lines with several hours’ wait time, insufficient backup paper ballots and more.”
Three-quarters of voters who called with problems identified as African American, Clarke said.
One state lawmaker, Rep. William Boddie of Atlanta, said there was ‘a complete meltdown’ in the state’s biggest city.
‘It’s really disheartening to see a line like this in an area with predominantly black residents,’ said Benaiah Shaw, a 25-year-old African American, as he cast a ballot in Atlanta.
The reports out of the state don’t bode well for November, when the state will be in play during the presidential election between President Trump and Biden.
Biden and Trump are expected to fiercely compete in this rapidly changing state.
That leaves officials, who have already been criticized for attempting to suppress the vote, with less than five months to turn things around.
Lines were long at some Georgia polling places, especially those in minority communities.
The Trump campaign seized on the problems to amplify the president’s broader opposition to expanded mail voting this fall.
‘The chaos in Georgia is a direct result of the reduction in the number of in-person polling places and over reliance on mail-in voting,’ said Trump campaign senior counsel Justin Clark. ‘We have a duty to protect the constitutional rights of all of our citizens to vote in person and to have their votes counted.’
The Biden campaign called the voting problems in Georgia ‘completely unacceptable’ and a threat to free and fair elections.
‘We only have a few months left until voters around the nation head to the polls again, and efforts should begin immediately to ensure that every Georgian — and every American — is able to safely exercise their right to vote,’ said Rachana Desai Martin, the campaign’s national director for voter protection and senior counsel.
Long lines also plagued voting in Las Vegas Tuedsay, where voters told the AP that they been waiting four and five hours in some cases even as state election officials suggested wait times reached three hours only in one location.