Georgia Elections Equipment Still Plagued with Problems During the Senate Runoff Election
History appears to repeat itself as the Georgia Senate runoff becomes plagued with glitches and malfunctioning election equipment on Tuesday.
History appears to repeat itself as the Georgia Senate runoff becomes plagued with glitches and malfunctioning election equipment on Tuesday.
Georgia’s voting system implementation manager took to twitter during early morning voting to alert voters that some areas had already experienced equipment failures.
Georgia is hosting a pair of Senate runoff races where Republican David Perdue takes on Democratic challenger Jon Ossoff, while Republican Kelly Loeffler faces Raphael Warnock. The outcome of the races will determine which political party controls the senate, leading to an onslaught of political funding and campaigning in the state.
The Georgia runoff preparations have also been weighed down by continuing legal disputes over the legitimacy of state election procedures and malfunctioning equipment. The state has been slammed with allegations of voter fraud and other improprieties following the 2020 elections in November.
Two months later, it seems history is set to repeat itself.
Georgia’s voting system implementation manager, Gabriel Sterling, announced problems early on Tuesday.
“Some issues in Columbia Co. There was a programming error on security keys for some locations scanners & pollworker cards. Voting continues on backup emergency ballots. Newly programmed keys&cards are being taken to locations via law enforcement,” Sterling reported in a post on Twitter.
Soon after, Georgia radio host, John Fredricks, revealed that voters from Republican precincts were calling into his show to say that they were unable to cast their votes. Callers stated that malfunctioning election equipment was the problem, and that poll workers told them that their ballots would be scanned at a later time.
Voters in Newton County took to Twitter early on as well.
One person claiming to be in a “heavy republican” district, complained that the “dominion machine” he had been assigned to had been broken, and he was advised to hand his ballot over to a poll worker. “Just voted in Newton County Georgia. Heavy republican district. When I went to place my printed ballot into the dominion machine, the poll [worker] said the scanner was broken and someone was coming to fix it, I placed it in the machine slot but not in the scanner,” he tweeted.
President Donald Trump made an announcement just after 1pm EST stating that he had received reports of Dominion voting machines were not functioning properly in the state.
Georgia Governor Brian Kemp along with Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger have spent the last two months navigating a myriad of legal complaints since the November elections.
Just this morning, a federal judge in Georgia threw out a lawsuit President Trump had filed against Kemp and Raffensperger. In the legal complaint, Trump asked that the state “de-certify” the results, citing the State had certified illegal votes.
Calls to fix the technical glitches and procedural errors have mostly fallen on deaf ears, with both, Kemp and Raffensperger, asserting that the state’s election process is effective and accurate.
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