Voting Rights

“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.

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.”

Aunna Dennis, executive director of government watchdog group Common Cause Georgia, said that election problems are a recurring issue in the state, particularly affecting black and minority communities. “We’re being disproportionately impacted because we’re not even getting enough supplies for our precincts,” said Ms. Dennis, who is black.

“It’s the wild, wild West,” said Aunna Dennis, executive director of Common Cause Georgia. “I don’t know what to call Georgia right now.”

And activists on the ground noted multiple issues at the state and local levels, arguing that voters were unable to find concrete information. Aunna Dennis, the executive director of Common Cause Georgia which is the state chapter of a nonpartisan watchdog group focused on voting rights, says that multiple polling locations moved within the 48 hours before the election with little warning and didn't provide proper signage to indicate the changes in locations for voters. And when machines stopped working, some locations only had 20 emergency and provisional ballots on hand. "For us, those are voter suppression tactics at work," Dennis says. "We all need to sit down to better plan, to create an emergency preparedness plan to make elections be more efficient."