A “power cord issue” is to blame after hundreds of voters were forced to wait at a Georgia precinct early Tuesday morning.
Video taken at Anderson-Livsey Elementary School near Snellville, Ga. showed a long line of mostly African-American voters as they waited to cast their ballots in the high-stakes mid-term elections. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that voters were forced to resort to paper ballots after several of the electronic Express polls stopped working.
Voters at a precinct near Snellville, GA were forced to use paper ballots after many of the voter machines were down. (Twitter video screenshot)
One voter likened it to “waiting on line at Six Flags,” as the line stretched the entire length of the school.
“Election day started an hour ago in my neighborhood and we don’t have cords to plug in the voting machines,” a man says in the video, posted on Twitter. “We all knew voting was today and only in my neighborhood people are waiting an hour after the polls open to vote. And [election officials] are saying that we don’t have power cords.”
“All of these dedicated people waiting to vote,” the man added. “This is what we call voter suppression. This is what we go through to vote.”
Gwinnett County spokesman Joe Sorenson said the issue wasn’t an electrical one, adding that such issues with the machines can happen from time to time. Sorenson later told NBC News “the machines were not supplied power and was running on battery & the battery ran out.”
Meanwhile, over at the Pittman Park precinct in Atlanta, voters said they were stuck waiting in line for hours because the precinct had only three voting machines, local station WSB-TV reported. The county sent five additional machines over in hopes they would help ease the long wait times.
In a tweet alerting local media outlets, a user complained that four voting machines were down at the Helene S. Mills precinct in Old Fourth Ward and that technicians were telling voters to come back at a later time.
Hundreds of people were already lined up, however.
“Only one machine working still in Old Fourth Ward,” Inman Park resident Renee Vary Keele tweeted around 10:30 a.m. “Hundreds here. Telling people to come back later.”
Fulton County spokeswoman April Majors confirmed that the issues had been “quickly resolved.”
“It’s up and operating now,” Majors told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “Patience is key.”
Watch more in the clip below.
NBC News has confirmed that the issue at Anderson Livsey Elementary in Snellville, GA was indeed a lack of power cords. Gwinnett County Director of Communications Joe Sorenson tells @NBCNews “the machine was not supplied power and was running on battery & the battery ran out” 🤔 https://t.co/YFa45nihXs
— Ayman Mohyeldin (@AymanM) November 6, 2018
