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Long lines snaked around some polling places as Democratic candidates vying to take on Republican Sen. David Perdue of Georgia in November faced off in a primary election Tuesday. The voting comes after weeks of delay caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
The state’s chief election officer has warned that voters could face long lines and results may be slow to be reported, as poll closures and virus restrictions complicate in-person voting and counties work to process a huge increase in paper ballots received by mail.
The long lines were already evident shortly after voting began at multiple polling places, including an elementary school in Roswell where about 60 people waited to vote.
Layla Cantlebary, 39, said she arrived at the polling site about 15 minutes before it opened at 7 a.m. and waited more than an hour to cast a ballot. The self-described liberal said her absentee ballot never arrived.
“I always vote in primaries, but the political times that we’re having right now, or the moment that we’re having is scary, and it’s very important I feel like to voice our concerns through our voting,” she said.
“With all the civil unrest, it just underscores the importance of coming out and voting for somebody who you feel is going to lead the country to a better place than we are in currently.”
She said there was tape on the floor inside the polling site to keep people spaced apart, but not everyone outside was maintaining 6 feet (2 meters) of distance from each other.
President Donald Trump was a huge factor in her voting decision, Cantlebary said.
“I don’t know that I’ve felt this passionately about disliking somebody ever,” said said. She also had concerns about growing income inequality in the country.
In Atlanta, a line of voters Tuesday morning wrapped around the block. Several sat on the sidewalk as they waited. Most of them wore masks.
Top Democrats in the Senate primary include former congressional candidate Jon Ossoff, former Columbus Mayor Teresa Tomlinson and former candidate for lieutenant governor Sarah Riggs Amico.
Perdue, a close Trump ally, is seeking a second term in November as Republicans look to hold the White House and Senate majority. He drew no GOP primary opposition.
The race has proven to be anything but predictable, with election day postponed and campaigns forced almost entirely online because of the coronavirus and the final days seeing widespread protests and civil unrest following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
Criticism of the Trump administration’s response on both fronts has added fuel to Democrats’ ambitions of winning in Georgia, where Republicans still dominate statewide elections, but Democrats are increasingly making gains.
If no candidate receives more than 50% of votes, the top two finishers will advance to an Aug. 11 primary runoff. Other Democrats in the race include former ACLU of Georgia head Maya Dillard Smith, Air Force veteran James Knox and another hopeful, Marckeith DeJesus.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said Monday that voters should expect to face longer lines. He also said his office won’t begin to release partial results until “the last precinct has closed” and predicted that the winners may not be known for days thereafter.
“To get a good concept of where we are with the election — who won, who lost, or who’s in the runoff, things like that — I would think that could take upward of a couple days in some of these really tightly contested elections,” Raffensperger said.
Voters will also select party nominees for U.S. House races and for state House and Senate. Other state and local races are on the ballot as well.
Ossoff entered the Senate race in September with the endorsement of civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis, as well as some built-in name recognition from his highly publicized 2017 special election loss to Republican Karen Handel for an Atlanta-area U.S. House seat. The young media executive has led in fundraising and has made fighting inequality and corruption a core part of his message.
Tomlinson, who was the first woman elected mayor of Columbus in 2010, has racked up a slate of endorsements of her own, including civil rights leader and former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young. She touts her experience in office, saying she’s “the only one in this race who has ever won an election and governed,” and says that experience can help her cut through dysfunction in Washington.
Amico previously served as an executive in her family’s car-hauling company. Best known for her 2018 run for lieutenant governor, which she lost to Republican Geoff Duncan, she often discusses the experience of helping to steer the company through bankruptcy, noting that executives fought to preserve jobs. Amico’s campaign has locked down the endorsement of several labor unions with a strongly pro-union pitch.
More than 1.2 million Georgians have already voted early, Raffensperger said Monday. A majority of those ballots were cast absentee by mail after the Republican elections chief sent absentee ballot applications to 6.9 million active registered voters, hoping to ease pressure on in-person poll operations.
Georgia postponed primary elections twice because of the pandemic. The state’s March 24 presidential primaries were first moved to May 19, when voters were set to choose party nominees for other 2020 races. As coronavirus infections and deaths mounted, election day was pushed back again to Tuesday.
(AP)
