When the COVID-19 pandemic hit two years ago, metro Atlanta’s county election offices were able to deploy tens of millions of dollars in outside donations to hire extra poll workers, pay hazard stipends, and buy extra voting equipment, such as machines to process the surge in mail-in ballots.
For Clayton, Cobb, DeKalb, Fulton and Gwinnett Counties, which administer elections for between 200,000 to 840,000 registered voters, that was on top of ongoing budgetary demands for voting machines, recruiting and training poll workers, and providing election materials in various languages.
Cobb, for instance, received $5.6 million from the Center for Tech and Civic Life for the 2020 election cycle–almost as much as its $5.8 million annual budget. The Center for Tech and Civic Life, fueled by $328 million from Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, disbursed similarly generous grants to counties nationally, including Cobb’s metro-Atlanta neighbors, to defray added costs from COVID-19.
