Updating last week’s post about precinct changes in Cobb, including a few in East Cobb: Those measures got final approval on Monday by the Cobb Board of Elections.
But the head of the Cobb County Democratic Committee and a Democratic candidate for a State House seat in East Cobb objected, saying they were made with little time to spare before the March presidential primary and the general primary in May.
They spoke during the public comment portion of the Cobb Board of Commissioners meeting on Tuesday. The precinct changes will affect 43,000 registered voters in Cobb.
The changes come as Cobb and other counties in Georgia will be installing new voting machines for the 2020 elections, and with turnout expected to be high in a presidential election year.
Cobb voters will go to the polls in the presidential primary March 24, with early voting from March 2-20.
Jackie Bettadapur of East Cobb, the county Democratic chairwoman, said she and the party’s appointed member of the elections board attend those meetings regularly, but “none of us were aware that these changes were planned.”
Making such changes on a “short notice, just under the wire” basis “has the makings of a perfect storm.”
Nine precinct changes were made, as the Cobb elections office is gradually moving away from schools for security reasons. Three of those changes are in East Cobb:
- The Dickerson precinct will now be at the Lutheran Church of the Incarnation (1200 Indian Hills Parkway);
- The Dodgen precinct will relocate to the Episcopal Church of St. Peter and St. Paul (1795 Johnson Ferry Road);
- The Marietta 6A precinct at Lockheed Elementary School is moving to the Redeemed Christian Church of God-Heaven’s Gate Church (816 Pickens Industrial Drive).
In addition, the Bells Ferry 3 precinct was divided, with a new Bells Ferry 4 precinct being created. Around 3,500 voters will be voting in the new precinct, located at Shiloh Hills Baptist Church (75 Hawkins Store Road). Bells Ferry 3 voters will remain at Noonday Baptist Church (4120 Canton Road).
“I just think it’s too close to the election,” said Caroline Holko, a Democrat who’s running for the State House District 45 seat in Northeast Cobb, and who ran for Cobb commission District 3 in 2018. “I haven’t seen a real plan to notify voters of the changes and why.”
Janine Eveler, the Cobb elections supervisor, told commissioners that voters whose precinct locations have changed, or who have been moved into new precincts, will get new precinct cards in the mail.
In addition, she said they will get a first-class letter delivered to their home address, and that signs will be posted at old precinct locations.
South Cobb commissioner Lisa Cupid, the only Democrat on the five-member board, voted against all three agenda items to split precincts, saying she wanted to see “some actual data to show that there’s a true problem . . . at this point in time.”
East Cobb commissioner Bob Ott said the board “doesn’t need to get into the minutiae” of elections board business, and Cupid snapped back.
“If it was to be a rubber stamp it wouldn’t come here,” she said. “This is a proper forum to have these discussions.”
With the approved precinct relocations, Eveler said roughly half of the 60 precincts at schools have moved.
She said there won’t be any more precinct changes this year, but that the process will continue in 2021.
Other recent precinct changes and new locations in East Cobb include:
- Addison 1, Legacy Church (1040 Blackwell Road);
- Bells Ferry 2, Christ Worship Center (3393 Canton Road);
- Blackwell 1, Northeast Cobb Community Center (3100 Jaycee Drive);
- Davis 1, Mountain View UMC (2300 Jamerson Road);
- Elizabeth 2, Covenant Presbyterian Church (2881 Canton Road);
- Garrison Mill, Unity North Church (4255 Sandy Plains Road);
- Hightower 1, Woodstock Church Shallowford (3662 Shallowford Road);
- Lassiter 1, Pilgrimage Church of Christ (3755 Sandy Plains Road);
- Mabry 1, Hope Presbyterian Church (4101 Sandy Plains Road);
- McCleskey 1, Shallowford Free Will Baptist Church (1686 Shallowford Road);
- Nicholson 1, East Cobb Baptist Church (1940 Shallowford Road);
- Pope 1, East Cobb Senior Center (3332 Sandy Plains Road);
- Shallowford Falls 1, Harmony Grove Baptist Church (4207 Shallowford Road);
- Simpson 1, Mountain View Regional Library (3320 Sandy Plains Road).
For more information, visit the Cobb Elections website.
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