Anatomy of an Election ‘Meltdown’ in Georgia

“What I experienced was a complete meltdown,” Jacoria Borders, a Fulton County poll worker hired the day before the election, testified at a legislative hearing.

Questions have also emerged about the accuracy of the vote count. County officials, good-government groups and elections experts expressed concern that Georgia’s new system failed to count some mail-in ballots marked with check marks or X’s instead of filled-in ovals. Some county officials believe that thousands of votes could remain uncounted.

Mr. Raffensperger’s office insisted it was following the guidance of the federal Election Assistance Commission, which certified its voting machines, on how much of an oval must be filled in for a ballot to be reviewed. But the commission says no such guidelines exist.

“If the reports are true, something is wrong, I’m telling you,” said a senior elections official in another state.

It was the historical failings of the secretary of state’s office that got Georgia into this position in the first place. The state moved to the new system after a federal judge found in 2018 that elections officials “had buried their heads in the sand” as evidence mounted that their old machines were plagued by security flaws.

The story of Georgia’s elections breakdown underscores the critical role played by secretaries of state, generally low-profile officials whose importance is magnified this year by twin challenges to the very act of casting a ballot: the pandemic and the fevered legal battles in many states over efforts to limit who can vote. Indeed, Mr. Raffensperger and his Republican predecessors have long worked to tighten the state’s voting rules — policies that have fallen heaviest on communities of color, leading to continuing litigation with civil rights groups.

Central to November’s election in Georgia, as the coronavirus surges through the South, will be questions about the availability of mail-in voting. Since the primary, Mr. Raffensperger has decided to stop sending absentee-ballot applications to registered voters, which seems certain to increase crowding at the polls. Instead, he plans to create a website where voters can apply for absentee ballots, a step that will not help many older Georgians or those without internet access.