VOTING RIGHTS GROUPS RAISE CONCERNS IN GA.
Cobb County elections officials reduce number of early voting sites for Senate runoffs
A decision by elections officials in Georgia’s thirdlargest county to drastically reduce the number of early voting sites for the crucial Senate runoffs has drawn the ire of several civil rights and voting rights groups.
Cobb County, which borders Atlanta to the west, will offer five polling sites when early voting begins on Dec. 14. For the Nov. 3 general election, it had 11 locations to serve the county’s more than 537,000 voters.
Advocates warned in a letter Monday that the closures “will be harmful to Cobb County’s Black and Latinx voters” because many of the shuttered polling sites are located in minority neighborhoods. The next closest sites are between 5 and 12 miles away, and public transportation options in that area of the county are inadequate, the letter stated.
“We urge you to maintain eleven advance voting locations for the upcoming runoff election,” read the letter, signed by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and five advocacy groups.
But Janine Eveler, Cobb County elections director, said she does not have enough staffers trained in advance voting to operate the same number of polling places for the runoff, which has taken on national significance because it will determine which party controls the Senate.
“We lost several of our advance voting managers and assistant managers due to the holidays, the workload and the pandemic,” Eveler responded in a letter to the groups.
She added that “the remaining team members who agreed to work would do so only if the hours were less onerous. ... We are at the end of the election cycle and many are tired or just unwilling to work so hard, especially during this time of year.”
In an interview Monday, Eveler said the workers are seasonal employees hired and trained for statewide elections. She said many of them were “not willing to work 14-hour days for six days a week for three weeks.
During early voting for the general election, voters in Cobb County waited for up to 10 hours, according to some news reports, another reason cited in the NAACP letter that officials should keep more polling places open.
Eveler said the county will add more check-in stations that were used in the general election, which should get voters into the booth more quickly. She also noted that voters will only have three contests on the runoff ballot — the two Senate races and a seat on the Georgia Public Service Commission.
The state’s two Republican senators, David Perdue and Kelly Loeff ler, are defending their seats from Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, respectively. The runoff became necessary because neither Perdue, who is seeking a second term, nor Loeff ler, who is running to complete the term of former GOP Sen. Johnny Isakson, got more than 50 percent of the vote in last month’s election.
If they win, Republicans will retain control of the Senate; if the Democrats win, they will control the chamber with Vice President Kamala Harris, a Democrat, as the tie-breaker.
In the Senate contests last month, Ossoff bested Perdue by 11 percentage points in Cobb County, while Warnock got 38 percent of the vote to 25 percent for Loeff ler in a field of 21 candidates for the special election.