Metro short of voting machines
6 counties to begin E-Day behind

By CARLOS CAMPOS
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 10/30/04

Elections officials could be overwhelmed by the record 3 million Georgians expected to cast ballots Tuesday, according to an analysis of registered voters, voting machines and poll workers in 10 metro Atlanta counties.

Six counties surveyed by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution do not have enough voting machines deployed on Election Day, based on a formula recommended by the Georgia secretary of state's office.

The result could be waits in line of four hours or more, voting well past the 7 p.m. close of the polls, and plenty of frazzled nerves and frayed patience by voters and elections officials.

Counties should have one machine per every 150 to 190 registered voters, according to a ratio devised by the secretary of state's office when deciding where to distribute new voting machines earlier this year. Clayton, Douglas, Fayette, Fulton, Gwinnett and Henry have higher ratios. Clayton's ratio is the worst, at one machine for every 236 voters.

Clayton elections director Annie Bright said she anticipates voting to continue a few hours past 7 p.m. Gwinnett officials predict voters may be casting ballots 90 minutes after polls close.

"We just have to work with what we have," Bright said. "I wish we had more machines. We're going to be better prepared in 2008."

Gwinnett's elections supervisor Lynn Ledford said the county shouldn't have serious problems because it will have the same ratio of voters to machines that it had in the 2002 general election.

'You will . . . have lines'

Officials say the number of machines in each county is only one factor required to run a smooth election. Most remain confident they are prepared.

"We will be able to handle the crowds," Fulton elections chief Cynthia Welch said. "You will always have lines . . . early in the morning, around noon and after 4 p.m. People seem to come when they get their breaks."

Advance and absentee voting also will be a factor. Ten percent to 14 percent of registered voters have already cast ballots in Cherokee, Cobb, DeKalb, Douglas and Fayette counties; about 8 percent in Gwinnett, 6 percent in Forsyth and 5 percent in Henry have done so. Still, that means at least 86 percent of a projected record turnout will be voting Tuesday. Elections officials said the number of poll workers, and their level of training and efficiency, also must be considered.

The secretary of state's office does not recommend an ideal number of poll workers. But Kathy Rogers, director of the office's elections administration division and former elections director in Savannah, estimates that one poll worker for every 100 to 200 voters is acceptable. In metro Atlanta only Forsyth falls out of that range, with 217 voters for every worker, but officials have told the state they are using laptop computers at the precinct level, which allows them to reduce the number of workers needed.

No county has unacceptable ratios of both poll workers and machines. That means some counties without the recommended number of machines could process voters relatively quickly with a high number of poll workers. Conversely, a county with plenty of machines but few workers could experience bottlenecks as a few people process voters — probably the most time-consuming part of the process.

The 5-minute vote

Doug Lewis of the nonprofit Election Center in Houston, which advises state and local officials, said the average person spends about five minutes at the voting machine. That average can vary depending on the length of the ballot.

Ballots can include numerous constitutional amendments, propositions, straw polls, referenda and other questions that can slow down voters. Most elections officials agree that Georgia's ballot on Tuesday is relatively short. It has two proposed constitutional amendments, both with fairly brief language. Further, a change allowed that judicial races be concluded during summer primaries so they no longer appear on fall ballots.

Still, massive turnout and long lines will be common in Georgia and throughout the nation Tuesday.

"I think what we're seeing this time around is that there are far more people energized to participate in this election," Lewis said.

Rogers, of the secretary of state's office, said it's important to keep waiting in line in perspective, and that it does not necessarily mean the election system is failing.

"I've seen people camp out all night to get tickets to a concert," Rogers said. "To me, the lines are not a travesty. The travesty is those elections we hold where we have 2, 3, 4, 5, 11 percent show up. That bothers me far more than it bothers me to see a line."

Any voter in line at a precinct by 7 p.m. cannot, by law, be turned away. But keeping a precinct open for voters not already in line by 7 p.m. requires an order by a superior court judge.

Most counties will post a law enforcement officer or elections employee at the end of a line. Other counties hand out voter certificates to everyone standing in line by 7 p.m.

It's anybody's guess as to how long voting might continue beyond 7 p.m. Tuesday. State law requires elections officials to reconfigure precincts with more than 2,000 voters for the next election if people spend more than an hour in line after the polls close at 7 p.m.

Risky ratios out there

Some counties have precincts approaching 4,000 registered voters. Others have high voter-to-machine ratios. For example:

• In Gwinnett, the polling place at Fort Daniel Elementary School in Dacula has 3,981 voters, with a voter-to-machine ratio of 199-to-1.

• In Fulton, the precinct at Manning Oaks Elementary School in Alpharetta has 3,926 voters and a 231-to-1 ratio of voters to machines.

• In Fayette, 33 of 36 precincts have high machine ratios, including a polling place at Heritage Christian Church in Fayetteville with a ratio of 231 voters to each machine and a voter-to-worker ratio of 195-1. The precinct has 2,535 voters.

Most counties have some voting machines on standby, ready to deploy to a precinct slammed by voters.

The secretary of state's office, which oversees elections, purchased 18,995 machines for all 159 counties using federal money in 2002. Since then, some counties have purchased additional machines — a total of 4,442 — from their own budgets. Earlier this year, the state purchased 955 more machines. It distributed 12 machines to counties including Clayton and Douglas that had high voter-to-machine ratios and needed them. But it didn't want to punish counties that had taken the initiative and bought their own, so every county got at least three machines.

DeKalb County, where more than 31,000 voters turned out early last week — the most in the state — is within the acceptable range of poll workers and machines. But Linda Latimore, the county's elections chief, said she's not taking any chances. DeKalb has extra voting machines on hand to send out to busy precincts.

A little ingenuity doesn't hurt, either.

During advance voting, Latimore's workers recruited voters out of lines and hired them to work polls as the crowds became unmanageable. Latimore said she won't hesitate to do the same on Election Day.

"We had people complaining — well, come be part of it," Latimore said. "And it's made a difference. You need bodies to keep everything moving."