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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsGeorgia's Flawed Software Caused Ballot Tabulation Errors
(Since this is a press release, I'm pasting the whole thing here)
June 13, 2020
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact:
Marilyn R Marks,Executive Director
Coalition for Good Governance
704 292 9802
Marilyn@USCGG.org
https://coalitionforgoodgovernance.org
GEORGIA VOTE TABULATION ERRORS DETECTED IN MAIL BALLOT SCANNING
ATLANTA, GA (June 13, 2020) --Wednesday night, Coalition for Good Governance (CGG) and its Georgia-based team of election security advocates began seeking information on mail ballot scanning and counting problems that failed to detect and count some votes. The tabulation problem was detected and reported by Jeanne Dufort, a Morgan County, Georgia-based activist and co-plaintiff with CGG in multiple election security and voting rights cases. Dufort noticed the inaccurate counting of some votes late Wednesday in her role as a Morgan County Absentee Ballot Review Board member, alerted our small team of very knowledgeable activists, and we quickly dug in to support her efforts by consulting two of the nations most prominent experts.
Those election security experts confirmed that a scanner tabulator problem caused some votes not to be recognized and counted by the software, meriting immediate investigation and correction before potentially flawed results are certified. Dufort and CGG colleagues reached out to other counties to confirm that the problem is not isolated to Morgan Countys scanner. By Friday night, CGG confirmed that officials in DeKalb, Athens-Clarke, and Cherokee counties also noticed the tabulation problem. Vote counting failures were found to occur for some X marks and check marks on the mail ballots. No investigation has been initiated by officials to determine the full scope or impact of the problem. CGG insists that a thorough transparent investigation and correction of the vote count must be immediately undertaken and completed prior to certification of the election results.
Georgia law provides strong protections for the voters ballot marks to be counted when the voter intent can be determined, regardless of how the computer interprets the voters mark. These Xs and check marks are valid votes and care must be taken to count every valid vote, said Marilyn Marks, Executive Director of Coalition for Good Governance. It is incumbent on election officials to take the time to count these votes, despite the faulty software.
Secretary Raffensperger insisted on purchasing the most complex voting system on the market that had been rejected by many other jurisdictions, and deployed it on an unrealistic schedule with limited slipshod and non-transparent testing. He even permitted the vendor, Dominion Voting Systems, to take over the incoming quality tests of their own equipment, tests that are legally required to be conducted by county election officials. Such outrageous policies created this unsurprising result of a flawed count.
Jeanne Dufort said, Every legally cast vote must be counted. Now that we know the software glitch records some valid votes as unvoted, we must look at all the ballots. This shows why fair elections require citizen oversight and robust audits.
Georgia law mandates that where the electors intent is clear, regardless of how the ballot is marked, his or her ballot shall be counted. O.C.G.A. Section 21-2-438(c). Georgia election officials are knowingly violating this Georgia law by not counting ballots that the scanners rejected, ballots that show who the voters intended to vote for beyond any shadow of doubt. In addition, Georgia law specifically provides that checkmarks and xs are sufficient to show voter intent. There is no excuse for not counting these ballots, said Bruce Brown, Atlanta-based attorney who has represented Coalition for Good Governance in five lawsuits against Georgia election officials for election security and voter privacy violations. The ongoing lawsuit Curling v. Raffensperger seeks to have the newly installed Dominion ballot marking device voting system banned from use in Georgia. Brown represented CGG in the successful litigation to ban the previous touchscreen voting devices that had no ability to produce auditable results.
This unfortunate problem demonstrates the importance and beauty of hand marked paper ballots in elections. They clearly show the voter intent which can then be accurately counted. Touchscreen devices conceal voter errors and voters selection inputs to the screen, whether accurate or erroneous, can never be known or verified. Anyone who uses a smartphone knows that undetected touchscreen input errors are frequent and common to all users. We all have a story of our most disastrous touchscreen error. There is no need for our votes to be subject to such errors, said Marilyn Marks.
CGG will update this information as more information is available and will conduct a press call on Tuesday on this issue and other aspects of the failure of the voting system in Tuesdays election. Details will be provided this weekend for Tuesdays press call.
Coalition for Good Governance, is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization focused on election security and transparency and voting rights, currently dedicating its resources to the battle for secure and fair elections in Georgia.
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Follow us on Twitter @CoalitionGoodGv
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Coalitionforgoodgovernance.org is a very effective organization based in Georgia. Please donate if you can.
uponit7771
(90,347 posts)lagomorph777
(30,613 posts)diva77
(7,643 posts)the court system (just my guess).
42bambi
(1,753 posts)diva77
(7,643 posts)Last edited Sat Jun 13, 2020, 04:38 PM - Edit history (1)
for the BMDs which are no better even though they pretend to be so.
No matter what the mode of "voting" is, rethugs will do all they can to cheat. We need something like CGG fighting in every county in the US.
questionseverything
(9,656 posts)we just need to count them instead of relying on whatever "result" the software spits out
not that plain paper ballots wouldn't have been better from the beginning, half the machines wouldn't come on for last election not alone count every vote as cast
thank you for the post
dlk
(11,569 posts)This was a test run.
diva77
(7,643 posts)napi21
(45,806 posts)ones recommended by the committee that reviewed all available equipment! That Co. was hired to prepare install them in every polling place & there was a very short time allotted to get it done by Primary Day. NO TIME FOR TESTING & TRAINING!!!
O HP{E Georgians recognize it's the REPUGS who caused this mess & vote them all out of office!
diva77
(7,643 posts)zero last time I checked, and there is no way to trust these nontransparent thug-owned machines regardless of testing and inspection requirements.
napi21
(45,806 posts)excuse for that! The software was promoted as a finished product! It wasn't just written for Ga. What the hell kind of crap were they pushing? OOOOH Damn! When are he voters of GA. going to vote these JA's out of office?
KentuckyWoman
(6,688 posts)And blamed the 17 hour wait times on Diebold.
2020 looks to be a slaughter for R's top to bottom so voila ... new machines to blame.
Shenanigans aplenty.
napi21
(45,806 posts)anymore. They're computers, and most computers are considered obsolete after 12 years.
Grins
(7,218 posts)Mr. Parscale is not-so-surprisingly quiet over the Georgia fiasco.
Hekate
(90,714 posts)csziggy
(34,136 posts)Here we use that system. For early voting, they print the appropriate ballot, put it in a folder and give it to you. You take it into a booth, mark it and feed it into the scanner. If the scanner detects any problem with the ballot, it spits it out and the voter has the chance to correct it. You can get a new ballot if that happens and mark it again. If you insist that the ballot is the way you want it, it is then counted.
Back in 2000, Leon County had about 175 ballots that were not acceptable to the scanners, and a portion of those were marked in a way that made the voter's intent clear so they were counted. Gadsden County to the west had the same system but did not program the scanners to kick out unscannable ballots. They had a much higher failed ballot result. Our Supervisor of Elections helped them reprogram their scanners and for the recount they rescanned the ballots. The ones that were kicked out were examined and the ones where the voter's intent was obvious were counted. The recount went smoothly and the following elections in Gadsden were much better run.
questionseverything
(9,656 posts)we need hand counted paper ballots in full public view and a tight chain of custody in the reporting
csziggy
(34,136 posts)Machine count or hand count, it doesn't matter which if the personnel counting the ballots can't be relied to give an honest total.
questionseverything
(9,656 posts)if elections are not transparent enough for citizens to oversee the count with no need of special skills (beyond counting) then the elections are not the check democracy requires
of course trustworthy civil servants is always a good idea but with out oversight, how would the people ever know the civil servant isn't trustworthy?
lagomorph777
(30,613 posts)Simple really. That's how democracies do it.
diva77
(7,643 posts)I wonder if that's how it was done in GA prior to computerized "voting" machines & "tabulators"
questionseverything
(9,656 posts)crickets
(25,981 posts)questionseverything
(9,656 posts)Buns_of_Fire
(17,182 posts)what is an absurdly simple process. And now, with the aid of computers and scanners, we're able to screw it up ten times faster.
KentuckyWoman
(6,688 posts)Nevilledog
(51,122 posts)diva77
(7,643 posts)aikoaiko
(34,172 posts)SoonerPride
(12,286 posts)November will be worse.