ATLANTA — The Secretary of State's office said voting machine deliveries will be completed mid-February, a week later than previously disclosed.
State officials revealed the new timeline in court documents filed in an ongoing lawsuit. They tell 11Alive News the later deliveries won’t impact early voting for the upcoming March presidential primary.
The primary is March 24. Early voting starts March 2.
When a truck delivered scores of new voting machines to a DeKalb County warehouse December 30, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said all 159 Georgia counties would have their new machines by February 8.
Now the state said the counties will get their machines by mid-February – one week closer to the start of early voting for the March presidential primary.
"We feel really good about where we’re at," said Gabriel Sterling, who is managing the rollout for the Secretary of State’s office. Sterling said the state is delivering the following:
- 33,000 voting machines
- 33,000 matching printers
- 15,000 battery backups
- 8000 voter check-in poll pads
They're all going to 159 counties. It is, Sterling said, a logistical challenge that he said the office will meet.
"We were supposed to get a truck of screens yesterday. They didn’t show up. They showed up today. That’s the kind of thing when you do an implementation with this many moving parts," Sterling said. "And third party logistics and everything else that goes along with it, and coordinating with 159 counties."
Sterling said Fulton County will get its voting machines next week. Fulton was originally scheduled to get them by the end of this week.
Sterling expects the delivery drama to be all-but forgotten by the time early voting starts – on all-new machines, he says -- on March 2.
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