Polling Station Devices Stolen Days Before Georgia's Election

Four polling devices were stolen just days before Georgia's special congressional election, raising concerns about the sanctity of a race Democrats and Republicans across the country have spent an inordinate amount of time, money, and manpower on, WSB-TV reports.

Officials in Georgia launched an investigation into the theft after the devices were jacked from a precinct manager's car at a grocery store in Cobb County, a suburb just outside Atlanta, on Saturday. It took two days for Cobb County's board of elections to report the incident, a wait time Georgia's secretary of state Brian Kemp called "unacceptable."

"We have opened an investigation, and we are taking steps to ensure that it has no effect on the election tomorrow," Kemp said Monday. "I am confident that the results will not be compromised."

It's not clear what the thief was planning to do with the stolen ExpressPoll machines, which—unlike actual vote-counting equipment—are just computers used to check voters in and mark who has cast a ballot. The machines contain Georgia's statewide voter file, which includes personal information like names and addresses, but doesn't include social security numbers, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Janine Eveler, Cobb County's elections director, stressed that the machines could not be used to vote illegally in Tuesday's election. Additionally, she said, the stolen machines would be replaced before people went to polls.

Tuesday's special election will be a major step toward determining who will fill Tom Price's seat in the House, left empty when he became the secretary of health and human services. Though the seat has traditionally gone to Republicans, Democrats have poured more than $8 million into Jon Ossoff's campaign, hoping the young, progressive candidate can turn a red district blue, the Washington Post reports. Ossoff's being marketed as the anti-Trump option, pissing off the president and garnering an unusual amount of Democratic support in a district that once elected Newt Gingrich.

If Ossoff manages to nab more than 50 percent of the vote Tuesday, he'll win the seat outright and start packing up for a move to DC as the first Democrat to serve for the conservative Georgia county since the 70s. If he gets fewer than 50 percent of the vote, but comes out as one of the frontrunners, he'll face off against one of his Republican opponents in June.

"I've said that we need to elect Democrats from the school board to the Senate," DNC Chair Tom Perez told NPR on Monday. "And we're working on all types of races because we believe we can elect Democrats because our—the American people understand that our values are their values."

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