On Tuesday, voters in Georgia went to cast their ballots in primary elections, but many of them found that they could not—or not without a long wait. Voters in the Atlanta area, in particular, faced huge lines and hours-long delays outside polling places; a disproportionate number of those voters were Black. As the day progressed, reports emerged about new voting machines that were malfunctioning or missing altogether. Public-health measures, instituted to prevent voters from spreading COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, exacerbated the delays. There were problems with mail-in ballots, too. Democratic politicians blamed the state’s Republican leadership for the mess; the Republicans blamed local Democrats. “There are no clear answers of exactly one thing that caused the breakdown,” Tia Mitchell, a reporter with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, said on The Takeaway. “There are probably many.”
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