Scattered online problems on the last day of voter registration in Georgia have some voters complaining of long delays and slow-loading websites.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution received reports from a half-dozen voters who reported problems registering to vote, and officials with the Democratic party and Democrat Stacey Abrams’ campaign said they’ve heard from dozens more.
Secretary of State Brian Kemp’s office said its staffers have received four “easily resolved” election-related calls from voters who experienced problems. A spokeswoman for the office said there have been no system outages and no systemwide issues.
The voter registration process is under scrutiny ahead of Tuesday's deadline to vote for the Nov. 6 election, which features a matchup between Abrams and Kemp.
The Republican has faced calls from Democrats urging him to step down as the state's top elections official as he runs for governor. Kemp has said he would abide by his "commitment" to serve and pointed to predecessors who did not resign while running for higher office.
Vicki Krugman said she was working to register about two dozen voters in Athens when she had to grapple with a slow-loading website. She was only able to get seven of the residents registered to vote – all on paper.
“People were very patient, but we had to register them to vote on paper because we couldn’t get onto the website,” she said. “I’m very disappointed. This is the last day to register – and that site should be up and running.”
Rebecca DeHart, the state Democratic party’s executive director, said Kemp is “responsible for website outages on the final day of voter registration in Georgia” and urged anyone with problems to call the party’s hotline at 1-888-730-5816.
Kemp's office has faced criticism over software updates that temporarily knocked voter registration pages offline.
A separate software glitch Friday involving the Department of Driver Services temporarily halted voter registration and forced the state to open some offices on Saturday and Monday.
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