A voter who lives in the proposed City of East Cobb said that when he went to vote Monday on the first day of early voting, the cityhood referendum wasn’t on his ballot.
Ira Katz said he cast his ballot at the East Cobb Government Service Center around 10:30 a.m., then realized the cityhood question wasn’t on it.
He alerted the manager but said he wouldn’t be allowed to cast another ballot.
Katz told East Cobb News the Cobb Elections office was told about the problem and he in turn was told there was a technical glitch that they hoped to resolve today.
Cobb Elections director Janine Eveler said the problem wasn’t related to a particular item on the ballot, such as cityhood.
After some voters reported not getting the correct ballot, she said her office learned that the Georgia Secretary of State’s office didn’t provide Cobb’s latest database to its vendor for Poll Pad, a device used at precincts to check in voters.
“Therefore the Poll Pad was creating the wrong ballot card for some precincts, based on an earlier version of the database,” Eveler said in a message to East Cobb News.
“We have put a work-around in place where the poll workers are manually bringing up the correct ballot on the BMD, instead of encoding the card on the Poll Pad,” she said.
“It is a little slower, but it will be correct until we get a new download from the vendor. They told us it would be later today and then we will bring replacement Poll Pads to the locations.”
The Cobb County Courier reported that similar issues were taking place regarding the Lost Mountain Cityhood referendum and some other primary races.
“I just wanted to get the word out to people who live in the [proposed] city to check” to see if the referendum is on their ballot before they complete it, Katz said.
Voters who think they have been given an incorrect ballot should report it to a poll worker.
Early voting in referendums for East Cobb, Lost Mountain and Vinings cityhood and the general primaries continues through May 20 at the East Cobb Government Service Center and nine other locations, including the Tim D. Lee Senior Center.
Related:
- East Cobb Cityhood debate at Pope HS to be livestreamed
- Cobb judge orders East Cobb Cityhood referendum to proceed
- At Cityhood debate, citizens asked to keep an open mind
- East Cobb News Cityhood information page
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