Cobb County, Georgia, in the Northwest edge of Atlanta, has a lot going on. It’s home to the Big Chicken, Six Flags and the Braves’ new ballpark.
The news spotlight has found Georgia’s third-largest county again, ahead of the Jan. 5 runoff that will determine control of the U.S. Senate.
Incumbent GOP Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue are locked in runoff battles against Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff. The campaigns have gotten nasty. You cannot watch TV or listen to the radio without being bombarded by numerous over-the-top negative ads in any 15-minute stretch.
The NAACP is claiming that Cobb County’s decision to cut the number of early voting locations from 11 to five “will be harmful to Cobb County’s Black and Latinx voters,” according to a letter posted on the association’s website.
Of course.
Runoff elections rarely generate the same voter intensity – also pronounced turnout – as general elections, so it’s plausible that local elections officials are cutting staff and locations for efficiency.
But Democrats are calling foul on the move, asserting that fewer early voting locations amount to voter suppression.
Here’s some context that was missing in some of the national media stories about the controversy:
First, the four polling locations were based on the divisive, hot-button code words of north, south, east and west, according to the Cobb County election site. (The fifth site is the main election commission office.)
But if geography is not your thing, maybe economics is.
Remember this is early voting – not a one-day election operation – and the process extends multiple days and a couple of weeks, starting Dec. 14 and ending Dec. 31. The cost of staffing the full 11 sites – again, with predictably lower turnout – will be 120% more in terms of people and locales, something that surely could not have been budgeted.
Third, let’s look at what happened just a few weeks ago during the early voting and Election Day turnout, and who benefited.
The blue wave for the Democrats in Cobb County – what used to be viewed as arguably the most conservative county in America 30-plus years ago – was not seen in early voting as much as it was in mail-in voting (you can request an absentee ballot at bit.ly/ga-mail-vote).
Check the numbers:
* Joe Biden beat Donald Trump in Cobb County, by 56,000 votes and change overall, and beat him by right at 45,000 votes that were mail-in votes;
* Senate candidate Ossoff beat Perdue by right at 41,000 votes total, and by close to 35,000 votes that were absentee by mail;
* Senate candidate Warnock beat Loeffler by fewer than 48,000 votes total, and by 38,000 votes that were absentee by mail.
(Side note: While tens of millions of dollars are being raised and spent on these two runoffs, there is a third race on the ballot, as Republican incumbent Lauren “Bubba” McDonald faces Daniel Blackmon for the fifth seat on the Georgia Public Service Commission. Here’s betting this will be the most-voted-on PSC race in the state’s history. Considering the PSC oversees power rates as well as procedures and policies of mega-companies like Georgia Power and Atlanta Gas Light, the average Georgian will be way more affected by the McDonald-Blackmon winner than the other two.)
Almost every TV and radio ad from the Senate candidates has some form of pleading with voters to “make a plan” to vote. Well, considering the advance notice offered to every Georgian about the status of the early polling station sites and the access and ease of mail-in voting, it’s puzzling to picture any claim how voter turnout will suffer at all, never mind aimed at a specific race in general.
Maybe the NAACP is posturing with a little preemptive hand-wringing in case it needs to take a page out the Trump “election was rigged” playbook.
Contact Jay Greeson at jgreeson@timesfreepress.com.
Jay Greeson