Election officials from across the state gather for the annual Georgia Association of Voter Registration and Election Officials conference, which has a March Madness theme this year. Maya Homan/Georgia Recorder
ATHENS, Ga. — At a convention center in downtown Athens, the air buzzes with conversation. Vendors line the hallways, stickers and other merch scattered across tables. Projector screens display giant basketballs alongside the American flag.
It’s not March Madness. It’s the annual conference for the Georgia Association of Voter Registration and Election Officials.
Sixty miles away at the state Capitol in Atlanta, lawmakers are mulling a proposal to overhaul Georgia’s election system ahead of the 2028 presidential election. But in a ballroom in Athens, hundreds of election workers charged with implementing the laws passed by the General Assembly are preparing to uphold Georgia’s election laws, whatever those laws may be.
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Until the Legislature adjourns for the year, however, it’s not entirely clear what counties can expect. Under a 2024 law, QR codes cannot be used to tally ballots starting this July, but lawmakers have so far failed to appropriate the funds necessary to make the switch. A new measure unveiled last week would postpone any changes until 2027, but it has yet to come up for a vote in the House. One bill that would have made sweeping changes to the way Georgians vote ahead of this year’s general election failed on the floor of the Senate on Crossover Day, the mid-session deadline for bills to advance.
Lawmakers are set to gavel out for the year April 2.
Christopher Channell, who serves as the elections director of Glynn County, said the prospect of having to make major changes to Georgia’s election system halfway through the midterm election cycle has left him feeling uneasy.
“There’s a lot of apprehension and uncertainty there as to what method we’ll be using in the fall,” he said. “Having two different voting styles for the general and the primary is a little bit scary.”
The conference, which spans four days total, includes seminars on key deadlines that election administrators will need to meet, how to better communicate with the public and how to handle any issues that arise with candidates after they have qualified for office. But one speaker also led attendees through a round of somatic exercises, which are aimed at reducing stress and muscle tension.
For many of the election workers, the annual conference provides a reprieve from the daily stresses of managing elections.
“Sometimes people forget that we’re human,” said Shauna Dozier, the Clayton County elections director. “When we come to the conferences, we get to be around each other, learn, grow, and also just be human.”
Running an election — especially in a swing state like Georgia — can be stressful and time-intensive. Elections directors from counties across the state described dealing with limited resources, difficulty recruiting poll workers, worries about maintaining the trust of their communities and concerns about voter fatigue after a spate of recent special elections. One attendee’s wifi hotspot is named “I just wanna go on vacation.”
“There’s a lot of stress, there’s a lot of moving parts,” said Akyn Trudnak Beck, the elections supervisor in Floyd County. “The longer I’ve done elections, the more tedious elections get, and the more eyes are on the more tedious tasks.”
Noah Beck, the Polk County elections director, said he’s encouraged to see state lawmakers becoming more responsive to input from elections workers this year, and hopes future laws passed by the General Assembly will take the unique needs of different counties into account.
“What’s going to be functional in Atlanta and in Fulton isn’t necessarily going to be functional in south Georgia or northwest Georgia or in these smaller jurisdictions,” he said.
But he feels the weight of the responsibility he has to the voters in his county to ensure their elections run smoothly no matter what.
“Failure really isn’t an option, so it’s not like other jobs that I’ve had in my life,” he said.
“If we fail at what we have to do, someone loses their right to vote. Someone gets disenfranchised. And that kind of failure is just not acceptable.”
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