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Georgia plans to close all but one voting site in a rural county

Uncle at Nintendo

Uncle at Nintendo

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Jan 3, 2018
8,578
www.cnn.com

Plans to close all but one polling place in a rural Georgia county reverberate through a battleground state

Voting rights activists are closely monitoring takeovers of local election boards in a state that helped decide the presidency and control of the Senate in 2020.
www.cnn.com www.cnn.com


Election officials in a rural Georgiacounty are weighing plans to close all but one polling place ahead of this year's elections, alarming local voting and civil rights groups.

But the deliberations by the Lincoln County elections board have reverberated far beyond this Georgia community of roughly 7,700 northwest of Augusta. The county is one of six in this battleground state that have disbanded or reconfigured their local election boards in the last year, thanks to recently passed bills by the Republican-controlledGeorgia General Assembly.

Several Democrats have been tossed off the boards. One reconstituted board eliminated Sunday voting during a recent municipal election -- an option popular among Black churchgoers, a key Democratic constituency.
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Open season now thanks to Manchin and Sinema
 
AlgusUnderdunk

AlgusUnderdunk

Member
Dec 30, 2020
15,235
Remember, the elections board is made up of humans who are made of meat and bone like everyone else, and just as subject to having their minds changed through the knowledge there are hideous consequences to their actions.
 
rjinaz

rjinaz

Avenger
Oct 25, 2017
28,384
Phoenix
But Mitchy told me African Americans vote as much as "Americans".

Oh right, that was the point, it was a call out to change that.
 
CharlesAznable

CharlesAznable

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,593
Not that this isn't gross, but Lincoln County is not majority black and even the article you posted mentioned this. Not sure where you got that from OP.
 
Orange Piccolo

Orange Piccolo

Member
Feb 1, 2018
4,911
Texas
AlgusUnderdunk said:
A group of people who get together to strip the rights of another group of people, doesn't do so because they have some magical invulnerability. They do so because they think they can get away with it without consequences. They only can if people let them. Don't let them.
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I know you're choosing your words very carefully here so as not to be interpreted as you suggesting violence.

But honestly, I think we're probably at that point, or VERY close to it. I'm not convinced words or protesting will solve this anymore.
 
Psittacus

Psittacus

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Oct 27, 2017
5,930
Officials there say closing six of seven polling places will eliminate the need to send equipment and staff around the county. It also will help mothball cramped and outdated polling sites that don't allow for social distancing, county leaders say.
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We are going to facilitate social distancing by closing 6/7 polling sites...
 
Truckondo

Truckondo

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,290
Garden Grove, CA
People are conditioned to go vote in person even when a vote by mail system works fine. Everyone knows what the "R's" are up to and a lot of those people are OK with it unfortunately.
 
Lord Fanny

Lord Fanny

Banned
Apr 25, 2020
25,953
Zanmato said:
I know you're choosing your words very carefully here so as not to be interpreted as you suggesting violence.

But honestly, I think we're probably at that point, or VERY close to it. I'm not convinced words or protesting will solve this anymore.
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We're way passed the point where words and protesting are going to change anything. If the George Floyd protests, the biggest and most long lasting protest event in modern American, accomplishing almost nothing didn't tell people that, I'm not sure what else will.
 
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Wraith

Wraith

Member
Jun 28, 2018
8,892
MechaMarmaset said:
Georgia has no-excuse absentee ballot voting. While I don't like them shutting down polling places, voting from home is an option.

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My precinct here in MN changed to a mail ballot precinct a few years back. We no longer have our local polling place, but as a registered voter, I was automatically sent mail in ballots (for primaries and general elections, postage paid) with no action required on my part. I have the option to mail in my ballot, to drop it off at the county courthouse drop box, or vote in person (early or on Election Day) at the courthouse.

It sounds like this county is putting more hurdles in front of their voters (no automatically mailed ballots?), and Georgia is trying to eliminate drop boxes entirely.
 
Shadow of the Void

Shadow of the Void

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Feb 9, 2018
2,623
That's not too far from me, alongside Clark's Hill reservoir across the state line from McCormick County, SC. It's very low-population (7690 according to the 2020 census) and mostly rural, with Lincolnton (pop. 1480) being the only town. It's about an hour's drive from my house to Lincolnton. While it's a low-population country, about 3600 people voted there last election, and according to their county website there are for now seven polling locations, all in Lincolnton. Polls are open for 12 hours, so that's 300 people per hour, or five every minute (and it takes longer than a minute to go through the process of casting a vote), if they're reduced to a single polling place assuming the same number of voters and if they can only vote in person. I can only imagine the lines. It's a predominantly Republican county, though, so I wonder how many of them will be fine with all of this in practice, considering how low the number of people per polling place currently is.

My precinct in Aiken County, SC had 972 voters in 2020, which is close to the average for the county's 84 precincts, and it only consists of my neighborhood, and not even the whole neighborhood. That's 81 people per hour on average, or 1.35 per minute, and there's usually around half a dozen machines, so they can get around 13-14 people per machine per hour. It can be a bit of a wait at peak hours after people start getting out of work, though fortunately I've worked on election day maybe once or twice in the early 00s, so I've always been able to go during the day when it was slower and only had to wait a few minutes (and essentially no waits during the Democratic primaries, as it's a predominantly Republican precinct). The polling place is literally a ten-minute walk from my house, and I've done that before if the weather was nice, so even getting there is simple. It should be at least that easy for everyone, if not easier.

A precinct should ideally have on average no more than 500 people and/or no more than 100 people per booth or voting machine.
 
onyx

onyx

Member
Dec 25, 2017
2,523
They're doing this is a county that Trump won by a large amount. Worse changes are happening in counties that Biden won.
 
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