Sandy Springs, Georgia. North Fulton County. It took 10 minutes to find parking and I had to double park. I entered the loooong line at 5:45pm. I finished voting after 7:30 pm or so. There was still a long line of people who will probably need until 9pm to finish their voting. The idiots in government decided to consolidate 6 polling centers into one for this election and they didn't bother notifying people. I found out by going online. I don't know how many people just gave up and left because they couldn't find parking anywhere close to the center. If Fulton County is responsible for this mess, the Democratic Party of Georgia needs to groom better candidates locally because we have an uphill battle already with a certain segment of the population unwilling to vote democratic no matter what.
THe election volunteers are no happier. One old white lady came out and started saying rudely to people "7pm , that's it . we are going to close the polls!". Then all of a sudden, you could feel the temperature in the room rise (Both whites and blacks and in my case, Indian). I immediately said "Call in the TV cameras so they can monitor this." So one guy summoned one of the reporters from CBS46 Atlanta to come in. He took some footage on his IPhone. Then one of the election reps asked him if he can see whether more people were entering the line. No one bothered to check at 7pm who the last person was to walk in the line.
So one another election rep came out and said they would honor everyone standing in line as of 7pm . At that point, most of us didn't know they were merely volunteers slogging away since 6am. We thought they were paid government employees and were about to unload on them for daring to close the polls. That is another ridiculous aspect of the system where volunteers have to handle more than they bargained for because some idiot in government decided to consolidate six polling places into one.
Fulton County democrats do us no favors when they govern like this. We need to be better than the republicans, not as bad or worse.
A lot of the poor who live in apartments are not as internet savvy in finding polling places as the middle class folk. A lot of them had no clue that their usual polling place was not open for this election. Some of them don't have cars. So they gotta scramble from one place to another in the last minute. Not a good day for the democrats in Georgia.
[UPDATE]: CBS46's 11pm broadcast had a report by the reporter I saw, Daniel Wilkerson, and he said the last voter left at 9:15. Most of the voters were African American and a lot of them had to scramble because they were not notified that their polling places were shifted to this church. Heads need to roll in Fulton County. It's one thing for the republican SOS to make it tougher for minorities to vote. But when it's one of our own? ?? Most of the people who came after 6:30 were African american. So guess who got the raw deal? Our own party supporters did.. And it looks like my pleas for the CBS46 guy to intervene wasn't in vain. In the report, it looked like someone else sought the same reporter's help when she arrived a couple f minutes after 7 and he convinced the precinct lead to allow her to vote. [END OF UPDATE]