The Daily - Georgia's Election Meltdown

Episode Date: June 11, 2020

A full-scale meltdown of new voting systems in Georgia is alarming Democratic leaders — and revealing a new national playing field — ahead of the general election in November. Today, we explore why voting access in Georgia has become a national issue for the party.Guest: Astead W. Herndon, who covers national politics for The New York Times.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily Background reading: Long lines and malfunctioning voting machines marred Georgia primary elections, renewing attention on voting rights there, and raising questions about how to ensure access to voting in the general election.With both Senate seats in play and President Trump up for re-election in November, Georgia Democrats are telling anyone who will listen: This time will be different.

From The New York Times, I'm Caitlin Dickerson. This is The Daily. Today, a full-scale meltdown of new voting systems in Georgia is alarming Democratic leaders ahead of the state's general election in November. My colleague, Ested Herndon, on why voting access in Georgia has become national issue for the party. It's Thursday, June 11th. Okay, Ested, so tell me what happened on Tuesday in Georgia. Tuesday was Georgia's primary elections, where they were slated to send Senate candidates and House candidates ahead to November's general election. But after twice being delayed due to the coronavirus

pandemic, finally, primary election day and some of the polls simply did not go as planned. What we saw on Tuesday did not look much like an election at all. on Tuesday did not look much like an election at all. Our newsroom is flooded with emails, calls, tweets, texts, voters reporting issues and irregularities at precincts across the metro. At the beginning of the day, polling sites were not opening on time. And then it became very clear that they weren't adequately staffed. Health concerns kept many longtime poll workers from showing up today,

leaving inexperienced volunteers to run new voting machines for the first time. Also, there were problems with the machines that were at the polling sites. Poll workers said they had difficulties turning on the voter check-in computers and encoding voter access cards and installing touchscreens. They had printer problems, missing some electrical plugs as well. There are also fewer polling places to begin with because of the coronavirus pandemic. So the virus has added more emphasis on mail-in ballots and absentee ballots, many of which some Georgia residents said they did not receive in the mail. And this created massive lines.

We saw repeated, over and over, people standing, sitting, waiting for the opportunity to have their say in our state's political future. Causing people to wait more than four or five hours in some cases. 53 years I've been voting. I never have seen a line like this in 53 years. This is wrong! This is America! This is a crisis in our world to make us not exercise our right to vote.

It also caused some people to turn away, just throwing up their hands and saying, you know, they can't spend a whole day waiting for a line that they don't know is going to move. The system is a joke. And we're not laughing. So why was this happening instead? What's the reason for all this chaos? Tuesday was a confluence of local and state problems. And what you hear from the counties that were particularly affected was that certainly their machines and their processes did not work, and they take some blame for that. But what Democrats say is a larger problem,

is a state and Republican administration system that runs the elections process that is not interested in helping these counties succeed. What I hear you saying is that what happened on Tuesday was not simply a fluke. Right. The roots of Georgia's fights over ballot access and voting rights start way before Tuesday. David, what has been the reaction there in Washington to the Supreme Court effectively hobbling the Voting Rights Act? In 2013, the Supreme Court opened the door for states to have more autonomy in changing their voting procedures

without input from the federal government. You see Democrats very upset about this rule, and you see Republicans who have come out so far praising it, saying the Voting Rights Act has done its work. It may not be needed anymore. And that allowed states like Georgia, states that have historically been closely watched in the South, to really overhaul their ballot process.

This has included closing polling locations across the state that have predominantly been in Democratic and African-American communities. And also they passed in 2017 what's called the exact match law, which means when someone registers for the ballot, if there is any difference between that registration and the identification the state has on file, whether that is a misplaced letter or an incorrect hyphen, it allows the state to throw out that ballot registration. That has led to thousands of people being purged from Georgia's voting rolls. And both of these things, closing the polling locations and the exact match law, have disproportionately impacted minority communities and Black communities especially.

I remember in 2018. In Georgia, a record-breaking 2 million early votes were cast, and all eyes are focused on the state's race for governor. Being in Georgia for the closely watched governor's race between Stacey Abrams and Brian Kemp. A poll released today shows that Georgia's Secretary of State and Republican candidate Brian Kemp leads Democratic candidates, Stacey Abrams, by just one point. And you would be at people's homes and you would watch them look up whether their voting registration was still on file. And many would be shocked to find out that they had been purged even without their knowledge. And this came in the middle of a governor's race that was just as much about voting rights as it was about Democrat versus Republican.

I'm Stacey Abrams, and I'm running for governor because where you come from shouldn't determine how far you can go. been the House minority leader in Georgia, had built a career off of registering new voters, bringing people, new people into the process, and kind of a vision of a blue Georgia on the backs of a multiracial coalition that had yet to be achieved. The blue wave is African-American. It's white, it's Latino, it's Asian Pacific Islander. It is made up of those who've been told that they are not worthy of being here. It is comprised of those who are documented and undocumented. And she was facing the Secretary of State, Brian Kemp. Well, thankfully, the truth here is very simple. Georgians should simply watch what she says. You'll know that she's talking about this election and talking about illegals voting for her in this election.

They filed a lawsuit. Who had refused to recuse himself from overseeing the state's election, even as he ran. And this race was wrapped up in accusations of voter suppression. My worry is that he's using his position as Secretary of State to tilt the playing field in his direction. And from Republicans about voter fraud. I think hardworking Georgians should decide who their governor is, not people here illegally like my opponent wants.

There was a real sense that whoever won this would be determining the direction and most importantly, would be the referee for the state's elections going forward. And on election day... Good morning. There is no lull in this line. And you can see people lined up here. The worst of the issues was in Fulton County. At the Pittman Park location, only three voting machines were sent, but eight were supposed to be there. I live in East Point, and I updated my address at least two times before Election Day.

And on Tuesday, when I went to my polling place, they denied me a ballot. Stacey Abrams lost by a little less than 55,000 votes. And when she lost, accused Republicans of voter suppression tactics that changed the outcome of the race. Democracy only works when we work for it. And apparently today when we stand in lines for hours to meet it at the ballot box, that's when democracy works. For a while, Abrams wouldn't concede to Kemp. Friends, friends, we are still on the verge of history, and the best is yet to come. Astead, how do Republicans respond to these allegations from Democrats that the prior election was unfair? On the defensive side, Republicans say that there is not evidence that they are proactively trying to suppress votes.

They flip the blame, saying that it is local Democratic officials in these areas who have not lived up to their task in administrating clean elections. They also say that they are focused on things like voter fraud, which we should note does not have real evidence. And they justify things like exact match as a tool to combat this voter fraud. But they've also done offensive moves. The state purchased new voting machines after criticism that the previous ones were not safe and a court order to do so. And those were used for the first time in Tuesday's election. And based on what you saw Tuesday, those measures to address problems in the electoral system, they don't seem to have worked. address problems in the electoral system, they don't seem to have worked. Certainly those measures do not meet the scope of the crisis. So for whatever new voting machines or for whatever back and forth that's happening between county and state officials, what is clear is that voting in Georgia does not go the way voting should be. But for Republicans, they'll say that the vast

majority of Georgia's counties, 150 out of 159, had fine days on Tuesday. But it's important to recognize that those nine counties that had the biggest issues on Tuesday. They're not only Democratic areas, but those are the counties that have the largest minority populations in the state. So from everything you've said, it sounds like Democrats would see the problems with Tuesday's election as being just a continuation of voting issues that have plagued these same communities in the past and that they feel Republicans have either ignored or even made worse. That's what Democrats will tell you. I remember running into the state Democratic chair when she

was trying to vote. It took her five hours on what was her 10-year wedding anniversary. And she was talking about how familiar it felt and encouraging people in the line to hold that feeling with them as they look towards the general election. But when you look at the reaction across the country and how much interest there was in what was happening in Georgia, I think a part of that is because the national Democratic and Republican parties realize just how important this state is. and Republican parties realize just how important this state is, not just for November, but what could be a preview of how Southern politics is changing in the future. We'll be right back. We'll be right back.

Ested, what do you mean? Why is Georgia such a key state for the Democratic Party? For decades now, Democrats have been virtually shut out of the South. It has been almost impossible for the party to find consistent success in getting a candidate elected to statewide office, whether that's a governor or the Senate and in presidential elections. And what Democrats have been trying to do over the past decade is create a grassroots momentum that can change the way that they operate in the South. And Georgia has been the focal point of that. Usted, help me understand the Democrats' strategy in Georgia. It basically breaks down to three areas.

The first is just the changing demographics of the state. New industries, particularly movie and film, have caused an influx of a new southerner, as some folks called it, who is living in places like Atlanta and the metro areas and has made the South their home in a way that has given Democrats a new type of voter to target. Another key point of the strategy is in registering Georgians who may not have participated in previous elections. So that includes predominantly young people and people of color and going to those communities that have kind of felt distant from the political process and bringing them along and involved. The third piece, which has been accelerated in the last three years, has been trying to persuade a white, often college-educated voter who probably had voted Republican before that Democrats are now a more acceptable party.

And this is something that Democrats have said Donald Trump is their best recruiter for. That there's a type of upscale Southerner who doesn't like the incivility that they feel coming from the White House. And it's just not as much of a hardened Republican as maybe some others. This is where Democrats, combining all those three, think they can make big inroads.

So it sounds like Democrats see Georgia as ripe for flipping from red to blue because of these shifts you're talking about. because of these shifts you're talking about? Yes, they see it as their most likely opportunity to deliver a blue state in the South for Joe Biden in November and in the U.S. Senate. But they also see it as a gateway to a playbook that other Southern states can replicate. The thought process is, if Georgia can put it

together after years and years of coming close, that allows places like South Carolina, places like Texas, to have a real roadmap in how Democrats can make inroads. What they're missing is a victory to prove to other states and to prove to the Democratic Party that the South is worth investing in. And how likely is it that this victory you're describing is actually going to happen? While it's certainly a possibility, you have to note that Georgia has been kind of fool's gold for Democrats for some years now, which makes the kind of conundrum for what the national party and Joe Biden's campaign should do this year. Should they invest in Georgia, which is the only state in the country that has both its Senate seats up in November? Or do they spend that money,

that time, that investment in states that they know are more likely to be the tipping point for the electoral college. It's kind of a choice between playing it safe or putting all their chips on the table. So in light of what they saw on Tuesday, which of these two strategies do you think the Democratic leadership is leaning toward right now? In the short term, what Biden chooses to prioritize for the November election, we don't really know. But one of the best ways that a campaign can signal its intentions

is through the vice presidential selection. If Joe Biden was to select someone who represents a kind of new Southern Democrat, someone like Stacey Abrams or Keisha Lance Bottoms, or even Val Demings, the representative in Florida, that could signal that the campaign is trying to unlock this type of new Democratic future in the region that we've talked about.

And I don't think that you can separate race from this question also. The South and Southern Democrats are overwhelmingly Black, and those are the same people that helped revive Joe Biden's campaign after he was struggling in Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada. To me, an important question as we look towards November, is will Joe Biden try to reward those communities with an increased focus on them as he moves towards the general election? Or is the primary over? And this is all about just the ways that the campaign believes it needs to beat Donald Trump. So we've been talking about how important Georgia is to the Democratic Party in 2020. But I can imagine that for that same reason, Georgia is equally as important to Republicans. So what are they doing to hold on to the state? I think like Democrats, Georgia Republicans have short-term and long-term considerations.

In the short term, they just think the state remains kind of structurally red. But in the long term, Republicans will concede that the demographics of the state are not moving in their direction. are not moving in their direction. And what they need to do to stop this kind of rising tide is to appeal to kind of new communities there. And there's kind of a pitch that we should tell them that the reason you're leaving California or New York or other places is because those states have high taxes and Georgia's business friendly. The why liberals have wanted to come here is because of the kind of conservative values. And that's what we should try to hold on to. The problem is when the president has so defined the parties by kind of social and cultural concerns, can a state Republican make a pitch to an immigrant community, a Black professional around Republicanism, but that not being tied in to what Trump has made the focus of the party?

You're talking about this cultural clash going on in the country, and that's very top of mind for a lot of Americans right now, obviously. So can you put this election we're talking about into the, plays in to the strategies that we have laid out. have tried to appeal to voters. You've seen Republicans in the last week or so try to make defund the police a scare tactic to bring back that suburban voter. You've seen them try to focus on the more destructive or looting aspects of the protests to discredit the movement as a whole. But frankly, public opinion shows that there has been widespread agreement around police brutality as a growing issue. And I think that's important to note about what candidates for both sides are saying right now in Georgia. Doug Collins, the representative on the Republican side who is running for Senate, he was the member who wrote and helped pass the First Step Act, the criminal justice

reform that President Trump signed into law. And this is a deeply conservative representative who has made that criminal justice pitch a part of his appeal, even in minority communities. And on the Democratic side, the Senate candidates are running very explicit campaigns about race and criminal justice and about inequalities that were kind of unfathomable in the South years ago. They say that the times are changing, that you don't have to be cagey or calibrate to the ideological middle on things like race, that white Democrats are willing and open to talking about things in explicit terms. And they think that that can be a winning strategy. Astead, you've been describing how important Georgia could be in the 2020 elections. So what does what happened on Tuesday night tell us about what we might expect? I think Tuesday is a signal for both the country and the parties of things that we might have to expect come November.

For one, if elected officials do not proactively prepare for an election that could be upended by virus concerns, we might have lines like we saw on Tuesday. If they're not prepared to count thousands and thousands of absentee and mail-in ballots in ways that are unprecedented in presidential history, we might not get results from key states on election night. And even more so about the type of messages that politicians

are giving to the public right now. If people don't feel as if going to the ballot box and voting is a process that is equitable and fair to them, it is going to be harder for particularly Democratic politicians to tell their base, this is where you should put your energy. This is how you make change. What we saw on Tuesday was not an encouraging scene. Thank you so much, Ested. Thank you, Kayla. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. The man who took his life, who suffocated him for eight minutes and 46 seconds,

he still called him sir as he begged for his life. I can't tell you the kind of pain you feel when you watch something like that. On Wednesday, George Floyd's brother, Philonise Floyd, testified before Congress. George wasn't hurting anyone that day. He didn't deserve to die over $20. I'm asking you, is that what a Black man is worth? $20? This is 2020. Enough is enough. Speaking to the House Judiciary Committee, Floyd called on lawmakers to pass reforms that would address police brutality and racial discrimination. If his death ends up changing the world for the better, and I think it will, then he died as he lived. It is on you to make sure his death is not in vain.

House Democrats are expected to pass a reform bill this month that would make it easier to track, prosecute, and punish police misconduct. But Senate Republicans have announced plans to draft their own reform bill. That's it for The Daily. I'm Caitlin Dickerson. See you tomorrow.