Tuesday was another election day, one of those quaint old democratic rituals that you may recall from the Before Times. And all day, because its election system was designed by undertrained marmosets—and for quite deliberate reasons, I might add—Georgia was a mess ever since the polls opened. Malfunctioning machines. Absent machines. Six-hour lines. The howls on the electric Twitter machine were audible on Neptune. If any place in this country screams out for U.N. monitors, it’s Georgia, and it’s not like Jimmy Carter doesn’t have the phone numbers of a few of them. From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Widespread problems included trouble with Georgia’s new voting system that combines touchscreens with scanned paper ballots in races for president, U.S. Senate and dozens of other contests. Some voters said they joined the lines after requesting mail-in ballots that never arrived. One state lawmaker, Rep. William Boddie of Atlanta, said there was a “complete meltdown” in Georgia’s largest county, where people of color represent a majority of the population.

Strange how it always works out that way.

Layla Cantlebary waited more than an hour to vote at an elementary school in the Atlanta suburb of Roswell, where she arrived to find a long line a few minutes before polling sites opened at 7 a.m. She had planned to vote by mail but said her absentee ballot never arrived. “I always vote in primaries, but the political times that we’re having right now, or the moment that we’re having, is scary,” Cantlebary, 39, said as she stood with about 60 others waiting to vote. “With all the civil unrest, it just underscores the importance of coming out and voting for somebody who you feel is going to lead the country to a better place than we are in currently.”

Yes, the balloting is hopelessly clogged, but the buckpassing is moving as smoothly as Brian Kemp through a goose. From the AP:

Republican Brad Raffensperger on Tuesday announced investigations into Fulton and Dekalb counties' election process. He called what was happening there “unacceptable” and said his office was investigating how to resolve the issues before the November general election. It's the first time Georgia is using its new voting system, which combined touchscreens with scanned paper ballots in races for president, U.S. Senate and dozens of other contests. But Raffensperger said “every other county” was significantly better prepared.

Pinning the problem on the two most Democratic counties in the state might be typical politics, but Atlanta wasn’t the only he great chewy cluster of fck on Tuesday.

In Savannah, Mayor Van Johnson said he was “inundated” with calls Tuesday morning from voters reporting “extensive delays.”Technical problems caused at least one polling place in the Augusta area to open more than 90 minutes late, Richmond County elections supervisor Lynn Bailey told WRDW-TV. News outlets also reported problems with poll workers operating voting equipment in Macon and a long line stretching through the parking lot of polling site at a church in Columbus.

This country can make sure every backwater sheriff can have a tank and every hick police chief can have rocket launchers, but it can’t run a damn election even if it wanted to, and far too many people don’t want to do so. November already looks like a calamity.

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Headshot of Charles P. Pierce
Charles P. Pierce

Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976. He lives near Boston and has three children.