Ga. voters face long lines, some glitches in Super Tuesday vote

GREG BLUESTEIN - Associated Press    05 February 2008

ATLANTA
Heavy turnout and sporadic computer problems spawned long lines at polling places in Georgia on Tuesday, and the campaign of Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said it would ask the state to keep at least one precinct open late.

Adora Andy, a spokeswoman for the Illinois senator's campaign, said one Atlanta-area precinct opened late and should not close as scheduled at 7 p.m. She said the campaign was considering whether to push for longer hours at other polling places where voters faced long lines.

State officials said staffers were working to fix "isolated" problems. A campaign watchdog group said some computers being used to verify voter identifications as part of a new state law had crashed earlier in the day.

The Secretary of State's office said it dispatched staff and poll monitors to precincts that reported problems.

"We're hearing reports all over the state of heightened interest in this year's presidential primary," said Matt Carrothers, a spokesman for the elections office. "Large turnouts are to be expected, and lines are a function of that."

Georgia is a potential win for Obama, who is looking to repeat the same victory fueled by a strong black vote over Hillary Rodham Clinton that won him the South Carolina primary. About half of Democratic primary voters in Georgia are black and the problems being reported by the state arm of Election Protection, a watchdog group, affected some black neighborhoods.

Lines reached 90 minutes long at one Atlanta middle school where equipment kept crashing; elsewhere, voters had to wait in lines of up to two hours and people turned away from polls after seeing how long they would have to wait, said Clare Schexnyder, a spokeswoman for Election Protection.

At a precinct at one Atlanta residential building, voting was delayed when only one of five voting booths were working and election workers had to hand out 75 paper ballots.

Elsewhere, a precinct in the suburban city of Covington, Ga., opened only to discover the wrong keys had been delivered with its new electronic voting machines. A Newton County Board of Elections official said the correct keys immediately were sent to the church and she had not heard reports of delays.

There were complaints of murky campaign tactics as well. Obama's campaign also said it was investigating complaints that elderly people in Atlanta got calls offering to allow them to vote by phone, which is not permitted.