Voters in five U.S. states went to the polls Tuesday for political party primary elections, but the balloting in the southern state of Georgia was slow, with voters reporting long lines and officials saying there were problems with voting machines not working.
In the state’s largest city, Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms urged voters to be patient, saying the long lines and voting machine issues were widespread.
“This seems to be happening throughout Atlanta and perhaps throughout the county,” Lance Bottoms wrote on Twitter. “If you are in line, PLEASE do not allow your vote to be suppressed. PLEASE stay in line.”
Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, had warned ahead of the election of the possibility of long lines because of the continuing recommendations in many parts of the U.S. that people in public places maintain a two-meter distance from each other to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
Jon Ossoff, a 33-year-old chief executive of an investigative TV production company, leads a large field of Georgia Democrats seeking the party’s nomination to oppose incumbent Republican Senator David Perdue, a close ally of President Donald Trump, in the November election.
Ossoff faces six other Democrats in the party primary but needs 50% of the vote to avoid an Aug. 11 runoff election. Perdue has no Republican challengers in his bid for a second six-year term in the Senate.
Elections also are being held in Nevada, South Carolina, North Dakota and West Virginia.
The spread of the coronavirus pandemic in the U.S. has pushed state election officials to institute new measures to allow absentee voting by mail, even as Trump has contended, without evidence, that mail-in voting will lead to widespread voting fraud.
On Tuesday, Nevada is staging an all-mail election, while North Dakota, Georgia and West Virginia sent applications for absentee ballots to voters to allow them to vote by mail if they desire.
