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Dear Friend,
Georgia's primary election on Tuesday was an absolute disaster.
Four-hour-long lines. Malfunctioning voting machines. Tens of thousands of absentee ballots “lost” in the mail.1,2 It was so bad that there have been calls for United Nations elections monitors to step in.3
And as usual, these problems were worse in majority Black precincts.4
Georgia's voting disaster is being called a “giant warning siren” for what could happen in November.5 If Congress doesn't act now, millions of voters could be disenfranchised or forced to choose between their health and their civic duty.
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Once the coronavirus pandemic began, Georgia’s election officials asked voters repeatedly to request absentee ballots in order to alleviate pressure on understaffed polling places. The voters complied with more than 1.5 million requests for mail-in ballots.6
But the state didn't hold up its end of the bargain. More than 60,000 people hadn't received their ballots by the last days before the day of the primary, and those who did were told to return the ballots in envelopes that didn't exist, along with other confusing instructions.7,8
On the day of the election, the state implemented new voting machines in some districts—machines that experts said were not ready to be deployed—which immediately malfunctioned.9 Polling places in the Atlanta metro area—a section of Georgia that is predominantly people of color—were understaffed and unprepared for the people needing to vote in person, while polling places in whiter, richer areas had fewer problems.10 Social media was flooded with pictures of hours-long lines in the Atlanta area, while other places had no lines at all.11
As former gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams said, “It is a disaster that was very preventable, emblematic of the deeply systemic issues” Georgia has.12 But it's clear that Georgia's leadership has no interest in preventing these failures.
It's not just Georgia whose election suffered during the primary. In Pennsylvania, thousands of voters were sent the wrong ballot. Maryland had outdated registration lists. Washington, DC, wasn’t able to fulfill many absentee ballot requests and had fewer than 15% of its polling places open due to the coronavirus.13
Experts are predicting a second wave of the coronavirus in the fall, right around the general election.14 If we want every state to have the mandate and the resources for a successful vote-by-mail program and give everyone a chance to have their voices heard in November, Congress must pass a nationwide vote-by-mail law with the next coronavirus bill. More than 100,000 Demand Progress members have emailed Congress asking for a vote-by-mail law, and now we’re going to step up our campaign.
Will you donate to help pass vote-by-mail legislation and protect our civic rights in November?
Thanks for standing with us.
Robert Cruickshank,
Demand Progress
Sources:
1. CNN, "'A giant warning siren': Concerns about November's election grow after Georgia's disastrous primary," June 11, 2020
2. 11 Alive, "What if you never got your absentee ballot? You've got options," June 8, 2020
3. Esquire, "Georgia Is Screaming Out for U.N. Election Monitors," June 9, 2020
4. NBC News, "Georgia election 'catastrophe' in largely minority areas sparks investigation," June 9, 2020
5. CNN, "'A giant warning siren': Concerns about November's election grow after Georgia's disastrous primary," June 11, 2020
6. The New York Times, "Beyond Georgia: A Warning for November as States Scramble to Expand Vote-by-Mail" June 11, 2020
7. Ibid.
8. Atlanta Journal Constitution, "Georgia absentee voting instructions to be corrected," April 28, 2020
9. The New York Times, "‘I Refuse Not to Be Heard’: Georgia in Uproar Over Voting Meltdown," June 11, 2020
10. Ibid.
11. Tweet by Brent Peabody, June 9, 2020
12. The New York Times, "‘I Refuse Not to Be Heard’: Georgia in Uproar Over Voting Meltdown," June 11, 2020
13. The New York Times, "Beyond Georgia: A Warning for November as States Scramble to Expand Vote-by-Mail" June 11, 2020
14. CNN, "Another wave of coronavirus will likely hit the US in the fall. Here's why and what we can do to stop it," May 2, 2020
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