The Democratic Party of Georgia filed a federal lawsuit demanding that the state change its election procedures to prevent long lines during the general election in November.
In the lawsuit filed on Thursday, three voters and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee joined the Democratic Party in asking a federal judge to require that the state increase the number of polling stations, improve the training process for poll workers, and mandate the inclusion of emergency paper ballots to help prevent long lines on Election Day.
Nevada Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, the chairwoman for the DSCC, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the problems the state had with its electronic voting system during its primary in June were unacceptable.
“The issues we saw in Georgia in the primary cannot be repeated in November,” Cortez Masto said. “This is a problem with a clear solution, and there is no reason elections officials should not take the reasonable steps to make sure Georgians don’t stand in line for hours to vote.”
From 2012 to 2018, 214 voting precincts in Georgia were closed, while more than 1 million new voters were registered during the same time frame. The lawsuit states that Georgia has some of the longest voting wait times in the country.
The state, which is under the leadership of a Republican governor and secretary of state, has already noted that it plans to add poll workers and voting stations, but the Democratic Party wants the promised changes to be court-ordered.
