Georgia's voting fiasco is a warning. The November election could be chaos
It was impossible to watch Tuesday’s election fiasco in Georgia – the equipment failures, the dramatic reduction in the number of polling precincts, the voting centers that failed to open on time, the insufficient number of paper ballots, the nearly seven-hour lines in many minority communities contrasted with the breeze in whiter, wealthier suburbs – without thinking, ruefully, of US supreme court chief justice John Roberts’ 2013 decision in Shelby County v Holderthat ripped the heart from the Voting Rights Act.
Those interminable lines wrapped across Atlanta and many other minority counties? The waits almost as long as a workday, making a mockery of any notion of a free and fair election? Well, more than 200 precincts across Georgia, disproportionately in minority counties, have been ordered closed since Roberts and the US supreme court cast aside protections that had prevented states and localities with a history of racial prejudice in voting laws from remaking their electoral rules without federal oversight.
But it wasn’t just in-person voting that malfunctioned on Tuesday. It was also impossible to watch Georgia’s expanded vote-by-mail system meltdown – forcing tens of thousands of voters who requested, but never received, absentee ballots to either join these long lines at the remaining, understaffed precincts, during an ongoing pandemic, or forfeit their civic voice entirely – without envisioning a train wreck this fall. Not just in Georgia, but in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and many other crucial states where any repeat of the chaos we have already seen this spring could precipitate a constitutional crisis unlike any other in our history.
We are in deep, deep trouble and seemingly completely unprepared for this November’s elections. The alarm bells keep ringing – first in Ohio and Wisconsin, then in Pennsylvania and now Georgia. Yet we hurtle heedlessly toward chaos.
Many of the problems we face involve intentional voter suppression, such as the surgically focused voter ID bills, precinct closures and voter roll purges (all of which disproportionately target minority voters), which Roberts’ ruling turbocharged across conservative states nationwide. Other issues relate to the coronavirus pandemic, which has slashed the number of willing poll workers and forced even deeper reductions in the number of in-person voting precincts. During Wisconsin’s April elections, only five of 180 precincts could be opened in Milwaukee. Add to all of this the usual underfunding, poor planning and ineptitude.
All of it points to danger. All of it was on display in Georgia. And all of it was predictable.
Those new voting machines that didn’t function? Six rural counties used them in December, found them confusing and experienced widespread delays.
The lack of training, poll workers and sufficient paper ballots to compensate during an emergency? The Republican secretary of state and county election officials refused responsibility and deflected blame on to each other.
While some of these issues are unique to Georgia, this isn’t the first time this spring that similar problems with mail-in voting have been on display. In Wisconsin, an unprecedented increase in absentee ballot requests flooded underfunded election boards. Undelivered ballots stacked up in post offices statewide. Voters in Washington DC also complained that they asked for absentee ballots that never arrived, pushing them into long lines during a pandemic and civil unrest. In Pennsylvania, officials are still counting ballots from last week’s primary in which 70% of voters opted to vote by mail, folded ballots snarled some optical scanners, and state law prohibits election officials from tallying results before election day.
In Georgia, while the secretary of state did take the proactive step of sending registered voters a voteby-mail absentee application, tens of thousands of ballots did not land in mailboxes on time. Just as bad, the former Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams said she received a return envelope that was already sealed. Situations like these forced voters to don masks, find an open precinct, then brave the long lines.
Thinking about November, it’s hard to be optimistic. It’s easy to see how the system might fall apart. It’s not one thing, it’s many. State laws requiring too many lengthy steps before voters receive an absentee ballot. Underfunded and overwhelmed election boards. A postal service on the brink of bankruptcy. A dire shortage of poll workers due to the pandemic. A shortage of in-person precincts because, due to Covid-19, senior citizen centers and schools are unsafe gathering spots for voting. A crush of absentee ballots arriving after election day, leading to disputed vote counts and lawsuits. Swing states like Michigan and Pennsylvania, where officials can’t start
counting before election day, delaying results for a week. A mistrustful nation already on edge after a decade of advanced Republican voter-suppression techniques, and a president willing to amplify false claims about voter fraud on Twitter. And a still-raging coronavirus pandemic that could force voters to choose between the health of themselves and loved ones, and their right to vote. A disputed election that lands before a 5-4 US supreme court that looks increasingly political and unfriendly to voting rights.
What’s intentional and what’s incompetence? It doesn’t matter. It all suppresses the vote, it all makes our elections less fair and less free. None of this is easy. But time is running out. How many alarm bells do we need?
David Daley is the author of Unrigged: How Americans Are Battling Back to Save Democracy and the national bestseller Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn’t Count