The computer failures that plagued the primary elections in June were again an issue in pockets of precincts. There also were reports of locations with too few workers.
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'I’d wait for hours if I had to': Long lines greet voters on first day of early voting in Georgia
SAVANNAH, Georgia – Early voting for the Nov. 3 election began Monday in Georgia, and thousands of voters lined sidewalks and streets throughout the state to have their voices heard in one of the most contentious elections the country has ever seen.
The computer failures that
plagued the primary elections in June were again an issue in pockets of precincts. There were reports of polling locations with too few poll workers. High turnout on Columbus Day when many voters were off work contributed to the logjam, as did continued concerns among many voters about mail-in ballots.
Election officials in Fulton County were aware of an issue with the electronic pollbooks used to check voters in at State Farm Arena, where Atlanta's NBA and WNBA teams play, county spokeswoman Jessica Corbitt-Dominguez told the Associated Press. Technicians were on site working to resolve it, she said.
The Savannah Civic Center polling site has 10 voting machines. Two of them shut down abruptly Monday morning, but came back online within 20 minutes with a visit from tech support, said poll worker Andre Wortham. In Pooler, a suburb of Savannah, computers were down at least an hour in the morning and wait times to cast ballots were as long as four hours.
Long lines for early voting have been a common sight in 2020, with voters lining up, sometimes for hours, outside polling locations in
Iowa,
Virginia,
Ohio and
elsewhere. Many states have expanded voting options, including early in-person voting, in response to the coronavirus pandemic.