It’s always hard to sort this stuff out but one appeared possibly of a human nature and the other technological. Frankly, Floyd County has had too many such whoopsies over recent years but once the electorate finds out repairs likely involve added money that usually ends any hubbub.
Besides, messy as it got no results were ever in real doubt and everybody knew what/who won before the TV news came on … and such news, out of Atlanta, wouldn’t have mentioned Greater Rome results anyway.
Nobody should want to go back to the old paper ballot days when the count was often still going on at 3 a.m.
The hangup at the Alto Park precinct making 599 ballots uncountable until computer whizzes could come to the rescue could easily be due to the voting machines simply starting to wear out. They’re 12 years old, after all, and weren’t exactly top-of-the-line anyway. Indeed, those very models elsewhere have been the center of vote fraud probes because they hiccup so often. Look at it this way, iPhones and iPads didn’t exist when they were put into service.
The other mess involved imperfect precinct/absentee ballots in the wake of redistricting, a human error. Of course, the elections office isn’t exactly overstaffed in these lean/mean times and no doubt all that newfangled early voting eats up time once spent double checking data and testing machines.
Plus, some of the new lines were really weird in Mount Alto and North Rome. Rep. Katie Dempsey wound up unopposed because her two likeliest opponents (by scuttlebutt) wound up on the wrong side of a Rome street and hence in the Bartow-based district of Rep. Christian Coomer. Of course, Republican incumbents don’t gerrymander. Yeah, right.
If potential candidates got “surprised” by where they wound up, little wonder that both voters and elections officials did as well.
However, no election should ever end with excuses … except by losing candidates. This needs to be addressed and repaired.
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