UNION CITY, Ga. — Extra police can be current on the election headquarters in Fulton County, Georgia, this yr — “just because of what’s going on,” LaShandra Little, voter schooling and outreach supervisor for the county, mentioned euphemistically throughout a facility tour Monday.
Simply hours earlier than Election Day, there’s quite a bit happening in Fulton County. Fulton is Georgia’s most populous county — and a Democratic stronghold that might present the blue votes needed to place Vice President Kamala Harris excessive, each within the state and, probably, total.
That is additionally the county’s first yr utilizing a mammoth new “Election Hub” facility. It takes up 400,000 sq. toes of a 1-million-square-foot warehouse in Union Metropolis, simply outdoors Atlanta. And on Election Day eve, it was buzzing with anticipation.
The Election Hub facility is imposing, wanting from the skin like an Amazon warehouse. Inside, election machines are lined up in prolonged rows and election staff function in neon vests and “VOTE” T-shirts. All through the constructing, they’re organizing voter registration software kinds, wheeling tabulator machines into place, and systematically opening the envelopes carrying absentee ballots — a step known as “pre-processing” that, at the very least in some states, permits the counting to proceed far more rapidly Tuesday. Close to a bit reserved for election observers, a studio-apartment-sized room is walled in glass on all 4 sides. Inside sit the computer systems that can tally the county’s outcomes.
Forward of a press briefing Monday morning, Little gave a tour of the ability to dozens of members of the media who spoke a half a dozen languages amongst them. Throughout Fulton County, there can be about 2,000 election staff making the democratic course of run on Tuesday, Little mentioned. Of that, about 10% can be figuring out of the Election Hub.
Ever since Donald Trump unsuccessfully pressured Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, to “find” the hundreds of votes needed for him to overturn the desire of the folks in 2020, Georgia has confronted intense public scrutiny — beneath a microscope smudged by Trump and his allies’ lies about (nonexistent) widespread voter fraud.
Rudy Giuliani was lately ordered by a choose to show over a penthouse condominium and varied luxurious items to 2 former Fulton County election staff whom he falsely accused of dishonest — and who efficiently sued for defamation. Only in the near past, a pretend video purported to indicate a Haitian immigrant with fraudulent ID playing cards who mentioned they’d voted a number of instances. Nonetheless, at the very least one outstanding Republican shared it as if it have been actual. “They are fighting so hard to steal this damn thing,” Trump mentioned Sunday. And he has by no means stopped mendacity in regards to the 2020 election, insisting he received.
Misinformation is the “biggest challenge,” Nadine Williams, the county’s elections director, mentioned at a information convention Monday.
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She has individually expressed concern a few “large crowd that we can possibly get on election night,” saying the county has skilled for varied situations alongside these traces. Officers hope the big new facility will make it simpler for observers to observe the method because it unfolds.
As in 2020, polling locations all through the county could have a police officer assigned to them. Additionally, as reminiscence playing cards with precinct-level poll counts arrive on the Election Hub on Tuesday, they may have firm: police escorts.
Williams has intensive expertise within the election division. However total, Little mentioned, the county’s election group is “pretty much all new.” She herself began in 2021. That matches with a nationwide sample of excessive turnover amongst election staff — ever since Trump used lies to massively lower public confidence within the Democratic course of and switch civil servants into targets of harassment.
Over 4 million folks across the state have voted early or by mail in this election, Raffensperger’s workplace mentioned Saturday, and Raffensperger mentioned he expects 1.1 million in-person voters Tuesday. In Fulton County particularly, officers mentioned Monday that they had already acquired hundreds of mail-in ballots. Officers mentioned they anticipated to have the ability to tally all the superior votes, and at the very least a number of the absentee poll votes, by 8 p.m. Tuesday. Assuming polls shut on time, about 70% of ballots are anticipated to be counted and reported by 8 p.m. statewide, Raffensperger mentioned at a press briefing Monday.
