"These [ballots] weren't coming from the vendor in Arizona," she said, recounting one cause behind the delivery delays in June. Yet it took one of her relatives 13 days to get an absentee ballot in Fulton County, in metro Atlanta, for August's election, which was a relatively low-turnout contest.
"There should not be that long of a time," Butler said. "In fact, they got their ballot the day before Election Day. And we dropped it off in the drop box, so we will see about their drop-box process: how that works. Or whether they will get a letter, like some people got after the last election, saying their ballot didn't count."
"There still are some glitches out there," she said. "Not quite as many [as June], but there still are glitches that we hope will be worked out for November."
Georgia officials have been making some adjustments before the fall, including tacit admissions that the number of presidential votes had been undercounted.
On August 10, the Georgia State Election Board admitted that scanners failed to count votes in June because their software settings were set too high, said Garland Favorito of Voter GA, which advocates for verified election results. The automated settings assess if a ballot oval has been sufficiently filled in by a voter. Voters who checked a bubble, as opposed to filling in the ballot oval, were not counted. The board ordered the settings to be slightly lowered for November, Favorito said, but the new threshold will not be as forgiving as in other states using the same system.
In other news that frustrated advocates, the state announced that voters will be able to use a soon-to-be-launched online portal to apply for an absentee fall ballot. (The current portal requires voters to download, print, sign and return the application.) In contrast, applications were mailed to all active voters before June's primary.
Stepping back, August's elections show that local officials are adjusting to holding elections in a pandemic. Yet these recent elections also underscore that introducing changes in the voting process are often confusing for all involved -- and that is before partisan considerations enter the equation.
This article was produced by Voting Booth, a project of the Independent Media Institute.
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