After being accused of deciding in secret not to consider a funding request to mail absentee ballot applications to all county registered voters for the November general election, Cobb commissioners did discuss the matter in public at their meeting on Tuesday.
Then the Republican majority voted against putting the matter on the meeting agenda.
The vote was strictly partisan—4-1—and came after the head of the Cobb Democratic Party blasted what she said was a behind-the-scenes process.
(In order for an item not on a meeting agenda to be added, it must obtain a “super majority” vote of four commissioners.)
The Cobb Board of Elections and Registration had voted unanimously last month to ask commissioners for $222,000 in CARES Act funding to mail absentee ballot applications to all 518,000 registered county voters.
But in discussing whether to put the request on the commissioners’ agenda for consideration, Cobb Commission Chairman Mike Boyce said he declined to do so because he didn’t have the support of the majority of his colleagues.
Commissioner Lisa Cupid, the only Democrat on the board and who is facing Boyce in the chairman’s race in November, said she wasn’t asked about the funding request during the agenda prep process.
She said there was “a lot of concern” that an item that received unanimous approval from the elections board didn’t make it onto the agenda, even for discussion.
She made a motion to discuss placing the item on the agenda at Tuesday’s meeting, and Boyce seconded that motion.
That the elections board request didn’t make it to the agenda, Cupid said, “is a troubling path to take. I do not understand why we’re taking it now.”
In his first public comments on the matter in his role as chairman, Boyce said “there is nothing secret” about the process, and that there was no vote taken.
“My job is to take the pulse of the board,” he added, saying that this is the first time since he took office “where there was generally no support for something.”
Boyce said the elections board never approached him about a funding request, and had opportunities to do so during the recently-completed Cobb fiscal year 2021 budget process.
In remarks at the start of the meeting, Cobb Democratic chairwoman Jackie Bettadapur cited issues with voting during the June 9 primaries, especially in Democratic strongholds in South Cobb, due to staffing shortages, problems with new voting machines and long lines due to social-distancing measures.
Absentee voting, she said. “is the safest way to vote in a pandemic,” and called issues around the primary a “debacle.”
A vast majority of those voting in the primary in Cobb voted via absentee ballot, causing days of delays in certifying those elections. Many more absentee ballots have been returned for runoff elections that conclude Tuesday with in-person voting.
She also reminded Boyce of critical remarks he made about Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger in the wake of some of those problems.
Republicans, Bettadapur said, “don’t want people to vote.”
Commissioner Bob Ott of East Cobb said he opposed the funding request because he’s heard from citizens who were confused upon getting primary absentee ballot applications from both the county and the state.
Cupid said in response to Boyce that CARES Act funding was appropriate for absentee balloting because of issues prompted by COVID-19, and thought it was unfair for the elections board request to be singled out when other entities had their requests considered.
(The elections board appointees include one from the commission chairman, two from the county’s legislative delegation and one each from the county Democratic and Republican parties.)
Commissioner Keli Gambrill of North Cobb said that nowhere in the potential agenda item she saw was CARES Act funding ever mentioned, and wondered why absentee ballot applications weren’t asked for Tuesday’s runoff election.
“This runoff election is just as important as November,” she said.
Boyce insisted that “there were other ways to approach this,” and said that there are more requests for what’s left of Cobb’s allotment of CARES Act funding (an original $132 million) than there was money left to distribute.
While voting is important, he said, so are food, rent, public health, schools and other needs that have arisen due to the COVID-19 crisis.
Near the end of the meeting, Cupid thanked Bettadapur for speaking out.
Related content
- Cobb FY 2021 budget, more CARES Act funding approved
- Cobb schools gets CARES Act funding after heated discussion
- East Cobb Election Guide
- The East Cobb Open for Business Directory
- East Cobb News COVID-19 Resource Page
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