Remember that 3% of Georgia is not 3% of the entire U.S.
Georgia is big enough that percentages is the right measure. If this had been Rhode Island or Hawaii then law of large numbers no longer applies and correlation of failures means that seeing even 30% affected isn't crazy. But Georgia is 11 million people, doesn't get that excuse, 3% is still a lot.
If you sit on your backside and say "eh, not too bad, these things happen", then you normalise failure, and things keep getting worse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalization_of_deviance