The two candidates for Cobb County Commission chair faced off during a debate Wednesday, just days after the start of early voting when some people were forced to wait up to eight hours to cast a ballot.
The socially-distanced debate was hosted by the Atlanta Press Club and WABE, a local NPR affiliate, and touched on local jail deaths, a controversial medical sterilizer, government subsidies to private businesses and a number of other topics.
The candidates were civil and calm throughout the debate, despite slight tension over the subject of early voting.
Commissioner Lisa Cupid, a Democrat who has represented South Cobb on the board for eight years, challenged incumbent Republican Chairman Mike Boyce on his support for election infrastructure given the long wait times. Boyce said the primary responsibility lay with the board of elections.
“I think we have to emphasize that it’s a partnership and the county has literally programmed millions of dollars ... to increase the funding capacity for early elections,” Boyce said. “I think the county has done all it possibly can, under the circumstances, given the budgetary constraints, to address that very issue.”
Cupid said the county had not done all it could. She said Boyce declined to act on a request from the board of elections that commissioners consider sending out absentee ballot request forms to all registered voters.
“During a pandemic we ended up putting a lot of lives at risk as people stood in line in large numbers on Monday to vote,” Cupid said.
The two candidates also addressed the county’s handling of a controversial medical sterilizer, Sterigenics, which is currently embroiled in a lawsuit with the county.
Both Cupid and Boyce suggested their hands were tied as the case makes its way through the court system, but Cupid criticized Boyce’s decision to allow limited operations at the plant earlier this year.
In response to a question about the number of deaths at the adult detention center and whether the county should change how the jail is operated, Boyce noted that the sheriff is an independent elected official.
The county commission’s role, he said, was to allocate funds to the Sheriff’s Office. He also suggested he was awaiting the results of a report from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, which is looking into the jail deaths at the request of the district attorney.
“The bottom line here is that we need to be doing everything we possibly can from the county line to provide all the funding necessary to ensure that people in that jail, when they serve their terms there, come out safe,” Boyce said.
The entire debate can be found archived on the Atlanta Press Club’s Facebook page.
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