Georgia

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Last year’s redistricting by Georgia’s Republican-controlled Legislature worked to the party’s advantage on Tuesday. The state was able to hand 16 instead of 15 electoral votes to Mitt Romney, The Associated Press reported, and in the newly created Ninth District, State Representative Doug Collins of Gainesville defeated the Democratic candidate, Jody Cooley.

Although Republicans had hoped the redrawn map, which added more heavily conservative areas to the 12th Congressional District, would result in unseating Representative John Barrow, a conservative Democrat, he managed to defeat his Republican rival, State Representative Lee Anderson.

The biggest question mark in Georgia’s election, however, dealt with a local issue. Voters handily approved a ballot measure to revamp the procedure for establishing charter schools. In the past, proposals had to go before local school boards, and their decisions could be appealed to the State Board of Education. The constitutional change means that a new commission made up of members appointed by the governor and lieutenant governor will now make that decision.

Supporters had argued that an independent body is needed because local school boards have a vested interest in turning down charter school requests.

Opponents had complained that such a commission would open the door to corruption. They also railed against a provision that potentially allows charters approved by the commission to receive more financing than local schools.

Complaints about voter rolls, voting machines and a shortage of poll workers and provisional ballots were reported across metropolitan Atlanta, The Journal-Constitution said.

Three Republican members of the House — Paul Broun of Athens, Lynn Westmoreland of Sharpsburg and Austin Scott of Tifton — were immune to such troubles. They ran unopposed.

Mr. Broun, nonetheless, managed to generate headlines for his denunciations of evolution and the Big Bang theory as “lies straight from the pit of hell.” Other Republicans scrambled to distance themselves from Mr. Broun, who represents the 10th District. They publicly questioned his standing on the House Science Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight. Critics urged voters to write in Charles Darwin’s name as a protest, but election officials said they did not count such ballots.