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DEL.ICIO.USSmooth sailing despite a little confusion
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Poll workers in Cherokee County spent lulls today chatting, snacking and reading Ladies’ Home Journal and Redbook magazines.
Some voters showed up at the wrong place. Some polling sites had been moved.
Cheryl Janezic went by mistake to Liberty Elementary School in Canton, which is next door to her new polling station. Her old polling station, a fire station/community center, had been closed due to a lack of parking.
At Freedom Middle School in Canton, poll manager Bob Tiedemann expected about 15 percent of the precinct’s 3,616 registered voters to vote. Next door at Liberty Elementary School, 166 voters had cast their votes by noon, said assistant poll manager Kathryn Young.
At Little River Elementary School in Woodstock, voting went smoothly. “Some people who voted here before didn’t receive notification that the polling place had been changed,” said poll manager Art Wick.
About 191 voters had voted by 1:10.
Things were slow too at Holly Springs United Methodist Church. “We have little splurges every once in a while,” said poll manager Carolyn Hopkins.
High school student and poll worker Meghan Gilmartin, 17, who was handing out the cream-colored cards for voters to fill as they came in, said she woke up at 5:15 this morning and was at the Holly Springs location at 6 a.m.
Poll workers in Cherokee cherished new “express poll” machines, which find voters names by computer and issues a yellow card for voters. This was done manually until these elections, with the poll workers sifting through pages of voters’s names to find them and having to encode the information in a machine.
“You don’t have to look through lists,” said Linda Maphet, who was working at the Marie Archer Teasley Middle School in Canton.
Kay New, who voted at Holly Springs United Methodist Church, was surprised to see she was the only voter as she entered the polling station in the church’s basement. She said she voted for Sonny Perdue.
“I don’t agree with everything Sonny Perdue has done necessarily but overall I have confidence in him,” said New, 59. “I know he has a heart for people. He does respect education.”
New, an elementary school teacher, said that if he were re-elected, “I hope he will continue to support education.” She would like to see smaller classes. “Children generally learn better in smaller groups,” New said.
In the race for lieutenant governor, she said she voted for Cagle after doing some research: “It did seem that Ralph Reed had not represented Cagle fairly in his ads.”
Rosalind Schwart, 64, of Canton wouldn’t say who she voted for as she left Freedom Middle School in the early afternoon. “It’s been a nasty, dirty campaign,” she said, referring to both Republicans and Democrats. “It’s pathetic.”
She said she voted because she has to.”I’m here but I’m unhappy, with a capital ‘un,’” Schwartz said.
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