Poll lines still long; voting days won’t be extended

Early voters continued to line up by the hundreds at polling places around metro Atlanta on Wednesday. Polling officials hoped fixes they made Tuesday could keep wait times manageable, but some locations still saw four- to five-hour waits on Wednesday afternoon.

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Jamie Gumbrecht / jgumbrecht@ajc.com

About 400 people waited in line to vote Wednesday morning at the Fulton County Government Center.

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Some 600 chilly but determined voters were waiting at the Centerville Community Center in Snellville when doors opened at 9 a.m. Voting there went until 10:50 p.m. Tuesday, and the first in line Wednesday had arrived at 3:30 a.m. with portable chairs and mounds of blankets to fight the unseasonable cold. The center’s parking lot overflowed and many left their cars along busy Bethany Church Road or in a neighboring subdivision. Gwinnett County election officials began to post wait times on their Web sites: by noon, the wait to cast a ballot in Snellville was at least four hours.

“It’s in a location where we have a lot of interested voters,” Gwinnett County spokesman Joe Sorenson said.

Throughout metro Atlanta, lines formed before polls opened: In Jonesboro, about 200 people stood outside the Clayton County elections office. At the Fulton County Government Center, about 400 voters snaked around the building’s first floor. In Dunwoody, the polls opened to a 90 minute wait and at the South Cobb Government Service Center in Austell, 350 people waited in line while more looked for parking blocks away.

“It’s a historical event and I want to be part of it,” said Dara Christian, of Hampton, who arrived at the Lovejoy branch library in Clayton County by 5:15 a.m. and was second in line.

It was the third straight day of huge turnout for expanded advance voting, which the state offered this year in hopes of easing lines during regular voting on Election Day, Nov. 4. Waits on Tuesday and Wednesday hovered around two hours or less at many locations, a break from Monday, when high turnout, staff and equipment shortages and state computer problems slowed the process.

Monday’s wait times of six to eight hours led state Democratic Party chairwoman Jane Kidd to call on Secretary of State Karen Handel to extend advance voting to this weekend and Monday. Kidd said it appeared Handel’s office was “unprepared” for the large turnout. DeKalb County Commissioner Lee May said in a letter Wednesday that Georgia should extend advance voting to handle the high voter turnout, “a great problem to have.” DeKalb County has led the state in early voting with 125,095 ballots cast through close of business Tuesday.

“It is not my intention to lay blame on any particular, person or body of government,” May wrote in a letter sent to Handel and Gov. Sonny Perdue. “It is my desire that we don’t inadvertently squelch the desire of so many Georgians to participate in the political process.”

Handel said Tuesday that Georgia law doesn’t include a mechanism to allow her or Perdue, to do extend early voting. Even if state law allowed her the extension, it would be a logistical disaster, she said. More than 3,000 polling places will open for regular voting Tuesday, she said, and poll workers and registrars need the weekend and Monday to prepare.

Handel also said she doesn’t think such a move was necessary, and called Kidd’s letter emblematic of an “orchestrated effort of that political party across the country.”

Handel said more than 1.3 million Georgians have already cast ballots since early voting began last month. With the exception of Monday’s problems, “things have gone extremely well in Georgia. We have had no complaints with voter ID, no complaints with voting equipment,” Handel said.

Still, there were some problem polls on Tuesday, and some lengthy waits on Wednesday.

In Fulton County, waits lasted two to three hours, down from an extreme of six to eight in one Johns Creek polling location on Monday. Fulton added poll workers and check-in machines to some locations, and 10 more voting machines in Johns Creek. More poll workers are added every day, but there aren’t any more machines to go around, said Mark Henderson, Fulton County’s voter education and outreach coordinator.

“I wish there were,” Henderson said. “The lines are long, they’re moving fairly quickly, but it could get longer. People are excited.”

The wait went even quicker for twin brothers Carl and Carlton Mason, 71, who said they stood a little over an hour — far less than they expected.

“It was nice and smooth, a quick wait because we were nice and comfortable,” Carl Mason said, as his brother nodded in agreement. “People need to be patient. This is a good thing we’re doing and if you have to wait to vote, so be it.”

— Staff writers Phil Gast, Tammy Bond, Tammy Joyner, Vikki Conwell, Megan Matteucci, Laura Diamond, Kent Miles, Michael Pearson, Nancy Badertscher, Ralph Ellis, Aaron Gould Sheinin, Ty Tagami, Kent Johnson, April Hunt, John Hollis and Ginny Everett contributed to this article.