MACON, Ga. — Macon-Bibb Board of Elections Chairman Mike Kaplan called the June primary a "miracle election" because they had to deal with new voting machines and COVID-19. Tuesday, the board had a stormy meeting to review problems during the June 9th election.
The board listed a slew of problems seen on Election Day, from voters being turned away at some locations to poll workers not having enough training.
"You shouldn't be sending people home," said board member Cassandra Powell in the board meeting. "I mean, it was a hot mess up there at Northeast [polling location] because I ended up going up there with all these complaints."
More Training for Poll Workers
The solution to many of the problems is more training for poll workers, the board said. Because of COVID-19, they had to train poll workers remotely on the new voting machines, "Which really didn't allow them to get their hands on it enough to effectively know how to open the polls," Chairman Mike Kaplan told WMAZ.
On top of that, the county was trying to fill their polls up with workers up until the last minute.
"We were recruiting still the day before the election," said Supervisor Jeanetta Watson in the board meeting.
Kaplan says also some poll managers couldn't come in because of health conditions and COVID-19 precautions.
"We had to use people who never managed the polls before and that created some closing problems," Kaplan said.
He says there's much more paperwork required when closing a poll with this new system. Kaplan and Watson both say one of their top priorities is more training for poll workers and managers.
"We're going to have a lot more training between now and the runoff, and hopefully, definitely, between now and the November election," Kaplan said.
Dealing with a New Voting System and Software Glitches
Then, there was working with transporting and setting up the equipment. Watson said in the board meeting that "a lot of the equipment got bumped around during transport."
"Some of the tabulators, some of the cases got knocked off the rows. The poll workers were uncertain on how to put it back on track, so that slowed things down on a lot of the polls," Watson said. "Then, the printers, the drawers got knocked around."
Watson says the equipment was knocked around because the county never received the cages they ordered for transport. She says they won't have those cages for the August runoff either, but the big problem that held the Board of Elections back from certifying votes was a software glitch. Kaplan says an electronic voting software company called Dominion Voting System needed to fix it.
"They had to create another database and then they couldn't figure out how to merge the two databases together," Kaplan said.
Kaplan says the board had to hand-count and combine the two databases to get the election results. He says a tech from Atlanta didn't come in until around 11 a.m. the day they were required to certify the results.
"You can be rest assured that people up the line that know what Dominion did and how unprepared they were in this capacity. They better get it together," Kaplan said to the board and guests in the teleconference.
Surge in Absentee Ballots
As for counting absentee ballots, Kaplan says for the June primary, the state was also using a new system for that. However, Kaplan says the county likely won't see the record breaking number of absentee ballots received for the June primary in the August runoff.
For the June primary election, over 18,000 people voted by absentee ballot in Macon-Bibb County.
For the runoff, the state isn't sending out applications to all registered voters. Now, anyone who is 65 and older or disabled and marked it as so on their primary election application will automatically receive an absentee ballot for the runoff. However, everyone else will have to request again, Watson says.
Kaplan says the county may see an increase of absentee ballots in the November general election if COVID-19 precautions are still in place, or if the state decides to send an application to all registered voters.
Kaplan says an obstacle they may face again in November is COVID-19 if there's a second wave. In that case, he says the county may see longer lines at the polls, not only because the expected high turnout, but also social distancing measures.
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