Voters in Gwinnett County Wait Amid Historic Midterms
reported feature / ISSUE-COVERAGE FINAL ASSIGNMENT
Nov. 30, 2018
ATLANTA — On election day morning, Danielle Watson arrived at her usual voting precinct in Norcross. She wasn’t prepared for the size of the line.
Nov. 6,2018 — Danielle Watson speaks outside of Lucky Shoals Park Gym in Norcross, Georgia.
“Today, I had trouble,” said Watson, a 33-year-old Georgia native. “I got here at 8 a.m. I waited two hours in line, but I had to leave. Then, I came back and waited another hour.”
Reports of malfunctioning voter machines and otherwise ill-equipped polling precincts came from around metro Atlanta and Gwinnett County, resulting in long lines and paper provisional ballots. The problems came after a historically close gubernatorial race marred by allegations of voter suppression from the onset.
After a 10-day fight to get all of the paper ballots counted, Republican Brian Kemp won the race while serving as Georgia’s secretary of state. Stacey Abrams, the Democratic candidate, has repeatedly accused Kemp of using his position to suppress minority votes and sway the election to his advantage.
Overall, Watson feels she got off easy in Gwinnett. She had been following the election news, and she has friends who were purged from the voter rolls.
“I’m just glad I dropped my daughter off at daycare this morning,” said Watson. “I usually take her with me to vote, but I had a feeling. I [checked] to make sure I was on the roll, and I still had trouble. They were understaffed. They were only letting five people in to vote at a time. There was a lot of apathy, I think.”
Nearby at Annistown Elementary School in Snellville, immediate voter machine glitches prompted unusually long lines in the morning. The Associated Press reported wait times of up to three hours, causing people to leave without casting their vote. Around noon, the line and machines were running smoothly again, and following a court order, the precinct hours were extended to 9:25 p.m.
Election day in Gwinnett showed the ground-level reality of a dramatic midterm cycle. Last minute electronic malfunctions were not impossible to predict. Georgia was one of five states that did not use paper ballots in this year’s midterm election. Kemp has opposed overhauling the state’s voting system, citing unfounded evidence of voter fraud.
By The Numbers
More than 50,000 voters were “sitting on hold” prior to the election. Of those affected, 70% were black. (AP)
Approximately 37% of all rejected absentee ballots in Georgia were from Gwinnett. (AJC)
Approximately 700 absentee ballot applications and 200 absentee ballots across the state were rejected under Georgia’s exact match law. (ACLU via The Atlantic)
In a poll with a margin of error of three percentage points, 44% of respondents indicated it was "likely or very likely that someone would attempt to tamper with Georgia’s voting system.” (AJC/WSB-TV via NYT)
While in office, Governor-elect Kemp purged millions of inactive voters from the system. Kemp implemented some of the nation’s strictest voter registration policies, including the “exact match” law that potentially disenfranchised thousands of Georgia voters based on small typographical errors. According to another Associated Press report, more than 50,000 voters were “sitting on hold” prior to the election due to exact match problems with the government’s database. The news agency found that 70 percent of those affected were Black; Georgia’s population is 32 percent Black.
Kemp has been dismissive of the allegations of voter suppression against him. The secretary of state’s office cites growing voter registration numbers as evidence that Kemp’s actions are only meant to make the elections more legitimate. While Georgia has added approximately a million voters since his election, these numbers are consistent with the state’s population growth in that time period, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Nov. 6, 2018 — A student voter in Gwinnett County wears a pin from a voting rights advocacy organization.
The conflict of interest at the center of the issue has inspired extensive reportage and analysis. Former President Jimmy Carter personally wrote to Kemp in a since-publicized letter, urging him to step down from his position of oversight. Carol Anderson, a professor of African American studies at Emory University, argues in a comprehensive piece for The Atlantic that Georgia’s election would have raised international scrutiny if it took place in another country.
“Abrams didn’t have to fight just an electoral campaign,” wrote Anderson. “She had to fight a civil rights campaign against the forces of voter suppression. Indeed, I can’t quite bring myself to say that Abrams ‘lost,’ because there’s an asterisk next to her Republican opponent’s victory.”
Georgia has a history of disenfranchising Black and other minority voters, and as a result, the state has birthed activism and advocacy. The issue of voter suppression brought about numerous court challenges both before and after the election. The New York Times reports an October ruling from a federal judge sided with critics of Kemp and said that Georgia’s process for ID verification could create confusion. In a federal lawsuit filed on Nov. 26, two voting rights advocacy groups charged the secretary of state with “gross mismanagement” and echoed the allegations against him. One of the groups, Fair Fight Action, is a political action committee recently started by Abrams as reported by the AP.
After the election, Abrams refused to concede until all of the provisional ballots were counted, but she was unable to secure the votes necessary to trigger a run-off. Kemp won with 50.2 percent of the vote. In an impassioned speech that was not a concession, the former state representative acknowledged Kemp would be the next governor and refused to waver in her condemnation of his conduct.
“The antidote to injustice is progress,” said Abrams. “The cure to this malpractice is a fight for fairness in every election held, in every law passed, in every decision made.”
Nov. 6, 2018 — News crews, reporters and voters outside of Annistown Elementary School in Snellville, Georgia.
Changing precincts, filling out extra forms and waiting in long lines at the polls are all obstacles to casting a ballot, whether perceived as disenfranchisement or not. While small, day-of developments don’t necessarily spell out voter suppression, in metro Atlanta and Gwinnett County, minorities were disproportionately affected. When viewed together with the tactics that preceded election day, these factors very well could have assured Kemp’s election.
Ultimately, people go out and vote. They drop their kids at daycare beforehand or take off work. Niyi Ogunranwo, a Nigerian immigrant and active voter in Gwinnett, was told he had the wrong location when he walked into his usual precinct in Norcross. Ogunranwo was in a hurry, and he was given no prior notice of the location change. He didn’t personally mind the trouble, but he questioned the process.
“I’m still going to vote,” said Ogunranwo. “But it is an extra step. I think that’s a bad faith tactic; if you’re going to vote, they should let you know where your precinct is. I just think that’s appropriate.”
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