The director of elections in Cobb County, Georgia, said the county's election systems need to be totally rebuilt amid faulty machines and a last-minute delivery of absentee ballots to voters.
"We're past 'how can we fix the current system,' and we're going to tear it down to the studs and completely rebuild," Tate Fall told Fox 5 Atlanta.
Fall told Newsweek that this quote was given in the context of coping with the late absentee ballots in the county, as Cobb County struggled to get absentee ballots to all 3,400 voters who requested them.
Cobb County Communication Director Ross Cavitt told Newsweek: "The discussion about 'rebuilding' the system revolved around the absentee voter process and our internal procedures that handle the absentee ballot requests that come in after our vendor's contract ends. Usually, ballots come in after the vendor's ability to process them, and we can generally handle that in-house.
"But because of a flurry of last-minute requests and some machinery that wasn't working correctly, we fell behind this year. There is clearly a need to revamp procedures and do more proactive checks on equipment. Those are some of the changes that will be discussed moving forward."
Cobb County's issues with late absentee ballots went to the Georgia Supreme Court after voters asked that they be allowed to return them to be counted after Election Day.
The GA Supreme Court ruled that despite receiving the absentee ballots late, voters had to either return them to the Cobb County Elections office by 7 p.m. on Election Day or vote in person.
This resulted in a third of absentee ballots being returned just in time for the election. Fall told Fox 5: "The postmaster of Marietta, himself, was delivering the last tray of ballots at 6:55 p.m. on Election Day."
In addition to issues with absentee ballots, Fox 5 reported that some voting machines had technical difficulties in Cobb County. Voters experienced scanners jamming and poll pads not syncing up.
One older and apparently confused voter was caught voting twice in the county, after he submitted his ballot in a regular polling booth and then voted again in the room reserved for elderly voters.
Despite these reported issues, Cavitt told Newsweek: "We did not have significant issues with breaking machines and jamming during election day. There was mention of a few precincts that had scanner jams, but they had multiple devices on hand and the incidents did not impact the process for voters."
Georgia voters not only had to deal with late ballots and faulty machines, but on Election Day multiple Georgia counties also faced hoax bomb threats from a cyberattack on voter confidence in the state.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said the threats originated from Russia.
"They're up to mischief, it seems. They don't want us to have a smooth, fair and accurate election," he said.
Other cyberattacks the state faced during the election included a viral fake video of someone alleged to be a Haitian immigrant claiming to have voted multiple times in Georgia and a cyberattack on Raffensperger's office website in mid-October designed to overload the site.
While Trump won back the swing state of Georgia, Cobb County was one of the few places that shifted to the left in the 2024 election.
Now that Trump is the president-elect, he is also unlikely to face charges in his Georgia election interference lawsuit.
However, Rudy Giuliani, who lost his Georgia defamation suit, has been left destitute after having to pay $148 million in damages to Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Wandrea "Shaye" Moss.
Do you have a story we should be covering? Do you have any questions about this article? Contact LiveNews@newsweek.com
English (US) ·