"Tell him to do his job."
That's the message for Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in a statewide TV ad campaign launched Tuesday by Stacey Abrams' voting rights group after a primary plagued by long lines, faulty equipment and missing absentee ballots.
Fair Fight Action's ad asks viewers to email an account -- DearBradfairfightaction.com -- with stories about their experience on Tuesday and their advice for Raffensperger, a Republican who is the state's top elections official, to remove obstacles to casting ballots.
"The chief officer running our elections is passing the buck on his responsibilities, trying to force underfunded Georgia counties to run our state's elections," the narrator says. "Tell him to do his job."
An examination by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution found that human error, equipment failure and a complicated, multicomputer voting system combined to create chaos that left some voters waiting as long as eight hours to cast ballots.
Raffensperger took no responsibility for a primary that even fellow Republican officials labeled a "meltdown" and "unacceptable." He aimed his criticism at DeKalb and Fulton counties, saying county officials who administer the votes failed to prepare for a new voting system.
State law, however, makes the secretary of state responsible for training county election superintendents, providing clear instructions and buying usable voting equipment.