Voting & Elections

But to Julia Vaughn of Common Cause Indiana, there is plenty of blame to go around at both the state and local level. She noted a lack of leadership at the state level. "It seemed to me they kind of told counties, 'OK, you figure this out. We're going to allow everybody to vote by mail, and you guys just figure it out,' " Vaughn said. " 'We're going to buy some (personal protective equipment) for your poll workers, but you know you're going to be in charge of figuring out how to process this mountain of mail that's going to come at you — twice.' "  But on the other hand, Marion County waited too late to sound the alarm over problems, Vaughn said. The county also should have made a broader effort to recruit poll workers. Either way, she said, changes need to be made now in order to properly prepare for the general election. "We know that November is shaping up to be one of the biggest turnout elections ever, so take the problems we had (June 2) and multiply them by some big number," she said. "So we've got to get our act together."

“Thousands of Georgians were denied the right to vote,” said Aunna Dennis, executive director of Common Cause of Georgia. “Our warnings were not heeded.”

“The cause of the problems is grave mismanagement of elections here in Georgia,” said Aunna Dennis, executive director of Common Cause Georgia, a civil rights watchdog. “The state failed to heed the warnings of what could happen in this election.”

“If we have to conduct our elections by mail again there are a lot of glitches that clearly need to be addressed, and a lot more investment needs to be made in voter education,” said Joanne Antoine, the executive director of Common Cause Maryland.

Part three of a series of first-person accounts from an on-the-ground perspective from Common Cause Minnesota Executive Director Annastacia Belladonna Carrera.

Aunna Dennis, executive director of Common Cause Georgia, said in a statement that her organization and the Brennan Center in January warned the Secretary of State’s Office to be prepared with “sufficient emergency paper ballots in case of voting machine failure.” She noted that in the several months leading up to the election, other voting rights groups issued similar warnings.  Dennis also called on Raffensperger to create a task force to prepare contingency plans for the upcoming elections. “There are only five months until the general elections, which will almost certainly see record turnout,” she said. “Today’s problems were avoidable – and they disenfranchised voters. That must not be allowed to happen again.”