Early Voting in Georgia, Round 2

[silverscreenselect]

The Georgia primary for all offices other than President is May 21, with a runoff June 18 in any race where one candidate doesn't receive 50% of the vote. I voted early yesterday. In Georgia, you request a party ballot when you arrive at the polling place, and you can vote early at any location in the county where you reside. When you show them your ID, they pull up your precinct and the ballot for that precinct and give you a credit-card-sized card to insert into the voting machine. That pulls up all the races in your precinct. When you finish voting, they show you a summary of your choices on the voting screen. You can change any of them you want, and when you're done, a printer prints up your results with a QA code, and you get your card back. You can check your choices on the printed sheet and notify the poll worker if there's been a mistake. You then give your card to a poll worker on the other side of the room. They feed your sheet of paper into a fax machine that registers your vote and keeps the sheet of paper as a record. The sheet of paper has your precinct number, so they can assemble them by precinct to do a paper recount if needed (that won't be needed for those who vote on Election Day since everyone is voting at the same precinct). By my count, they had six poll workers at this location (the north county government annex).

The primary ballot in Georgia this year is shorter than most. There is no Senate race, no Governor or other cabinet member race, and no public service commission races. There were about ten party-specific races, with several of them having candidates running unopposed. The Republican ballot was a bit shorter, since races in which Republicans didn't field a candidate weren't listed (I looked at a sample ballot). I assume in other parts of the state, Democrats won't field candidates for some offices as well. In addition to the party races, there were about 30 judgeship races on the ballot. These races are non-partisan, so people could request a non-partisan ballot and vote on them. Only four judges had any opposition on my ballot. (Other parts of the state have fewer trial judges and a shorter ballot.) In Georgia, incumbent judges rarely retire at the end of their term. Those who wish to leave usually resign a few months early, so the governor can appoint a replacement.

Only four judges had any opposition. One was a Supreme Court justice, in which John Barrow, a former Congressman from central Georgia is trying to unseat an incumbent. Judges are limited as to how they can campaign by judicial ethics rules, but Barrow has noted his support for abortion rights to the extent possible in his campaign. Another opposed judge is Scott McAfee, the judge in the Trump conspiracy case. I voted for McAfee, because I think he is trying to be conscientious and fair-minded in his rulings. Also, a new judge, even one more supposedly liberal, would probably delay the trial until after the general election. (A new judge's term begins January 1). Non-spoiler: I also voted for Fani Willis, who has a primary opponent.

Because of the length of the ballot, my choices were printed on both sides of the sheet of paper. (They included several questions for Democratic voters asking their stances on questions like abortion rights. I felt these were silly and a waste of time, since the questions were phrased as leadingly as possible to get the desired answer.) It took about three minutes for the fax machine to register my vote. (They had two fax machines, but they were separated by precinct, so that anyone in my fax machine's precincts couldn't process their vote until my vote finished processing.) That wasn't a problem today, because there were only 3-4 other people voting at the same time as me, but on a crowded election day, this long a delay could result in some long lines of people waiting to process their ballots.

[tlynn78]

Oooh, good thing you voted for Fani! Maybe with another term she can start working on the backlog of 20,000+ cases, the 35% of jail inmates who remain unindicted, etc, while she indulges in her vendetta and deals with her personal legal issues.