Richard Barron, Fulton’s director of registration and elections, said reports that some voters were denied provisional ballots is unconfirmed.
Voting advocates said they were concerned about voters being denied provisional ballots.
Barron said his poll workers are trained to send voters to the correct voting place if they are at the wrong precinct, but will not deny anyone provisional ballots. Once rush hour begins, he said, workers just give them provisional ballots.
“Poll workers are not trained to turn people away,” he said. “We encourage them to go to their polling place on election day so their whole ballot will count. They can end up losing their vote for state representative, for U.S. Congress (if they vote provisionally). What’s the bigger disenfranchisement?”
Julie Houk of the national Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, who was stationed in Georgia as part of that group’s Election Protection hotline effort, said it was unclear how many people were affected by the issue. Advocates were encouraged, however, that Barron sent out an advisory to poll workers to address it.
Barron also said he got reports that “people were accosting voters” outside polling locations instead of waiting for them to report issues, although it was not clear if those people represented specific advocacy groups or were acting independently.
“They seemed to be more looking to create problems,” he said. “If they have the name of somebody that was denied a provisional ballot, by all means, send them back there.”
Barron said a Justice Department attorney who was watching polling locations in the county told him that some poll watchers appeared to be “agitating” tense situations. With poll watchers saying one thing and poll workers saying another, “you don’t know where the truth lies,” he said.
Barron said in addition to complaints regarding provisional ballots, he was told about a sign at the Adamsville Recreation Center that stated no provisional ballots would be distributed until 5 p.m.
A worker who went out after the report did not see the sign, he said.
“Somebody makes a call about something and you never know what happens,” he said. “We don’t even know if there was any truth to it.”
