
Georgia’s 127k Missing Votes, Disproportionate to African American Neighborhoods - mcgwiz
https://coaltionforgoodgovernance.sharefile.com/share/view/sa100c250cf8408e8?skipNativeCheck=true
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burlesona
Important context from the executive summary that is missing from the
headline:

\- the missing votes are from the Lt. Governors race only, not the total
ballot

\- many people reported software glitches with that specific ballot item

\- the study blames faulty programming and insists the state not use
electronic voting since it apparently is not reliable

Their conclusions are strongly worded but sound reasonable to me.

Quoted from the executive summary:

• Forensic examinations of the machine programming must be promptly undertaken
to obtain answers, locate the source of the errors, and, if appropriate, hold
officials accountable.

• Electronic voting systems must be immediately abandoned and paper ballots
adopted so that no future elections are conducted on Georgia’s unauditable
machines.

• Governor Kemp, Secretary Raffensperger, and legislative leaders must abandon
their plan to adopt a new ballot-marking-device electronic voting system that,
like the current system, is unauditable and vulnerable to problems of the type
experienced in November’s election.

~~~
burlesona
I'll add as a reply, since it's a side-tangent:

When I moved to California I was really impressed by the way voting is handled
here. Specifically two things:

(1) I was able to vote one block away at a neighbors garage. I don't know
exactly how this works, but apparently people can volunteer to host a polling
place, go through a training program to get certified to do it, and then the
state will give them the equipment to do it. These polling places are just
about everywhere, and it made voting exceptionally quick and easy.

The neighbors who ran it were also very courteous and professional. While
there, I saw them handle several questions and problems that people had, and
they did an excellent job. I was truly impressed.

(2) The ballot system was: you mark a paper ballot with a pen, and then you
feed that into a scanner which electronically tallies your vote. It also keeps
the paper ballot around as a record. So it would seem to offer the practical
efficiency of an electronic system with the auditability of a paper system. I
liked it.

Having previously voted in three other states, this was the best experience by
far. I have my own complaints about California, but I'd love to see this way
of handling elections become more widespread.

~~~
dmckeon
Glad you liked the mark/sense system, but California voting systems are not
state-wide, but are county by county. The county I reside in used to have a
system like that you describe (perhaps made by Eagle?), but has now moved to a
display screen and paper tape system.

The nice things about the mark & scan systems are that the voter gets
immediate notification of an unscannable ballot: stray marks, mis-marks,
overvotes, and similar issues are correctable in real time _by the voter_ ,
perhaps by exchanging the spoiled ballot for a new one, and destroying the
spoiled ballot. The scanned paper ballots are also available to be rescanned
for a recount or audit.

Creating a voting system for a many-race election that is intrinsically
resistant to manipulation is harder that it first appears. I used to (circa
2000) think that electronic voting would supersede paper ballots in a few
years. Now I think that paper ballots have a simplicity and durability that
outweighs the apparent convenience of electronic approaches.

source: elections official in two states, voter registrar in one.

~~~
jellicle
Right. You can get all the supposed advantages of each system, if you want.

Use a touchscreen, fill out a ballot, hit the print button, receive a paper
printed ballot, inspect it for errors, drop it into a scanning system that
scans and retains it. Importantly, the optical scan is done not by reading any
sort of barcode printed on the paper but by reading the same English letters
as the voter is inspecting.

All the convenience of electronic systems, hand recount is available and easy.
Hand audit some of the machines after every election to ensure accuracy.
Doesn't matter how messed up the touchscreens are, since the paper ballot can
be inspected by the voter before being cast. No such thing as hanging chad or
butterfly ballot problems. Zero bad ballots. Voters who skip races will be
doing so intentionally. "LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR: NO VOTE". If they turn that in
to be scanned, that's what they wanted.

~~~
ethbro
As far as I know, this is similar to the systems Georgia is looking at
deploying in our upgrade.

Having a paper audit trail has become a fairly big cause, so I'd be surprised
if the legislature recommends solutions that don't satisfy this.

~~~
dmckeon
Good luck with that: [https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/how-
voti...](https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/how-voting-
machine-lobbyists-undermine-the-democratic-process)

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aaronbrethorst
For anyone who didn't follow the Georgia Governor's race last November, it
featured Brian Kemp, the Republican Secretary of State running against Stacey
Abrams, the Democratic Minority Leader of the GA House of Representatives, who
happens to be African-American.

The race was decided by a margin of about 55,000 votes in Kemp's favor.

Kemp, as Secretary of State, was in charge of Georgia state elections, which
presented a conflict of interest for him as he sought higher office. Kemp
implemented a voter suppression policy called "exact match," which helped to
severely complicate the voting process for about 53,000 Georgians, 80% of whom
were people of color.

More info: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/georgias-voter-
suppr...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/georgias-voter-suppression-
problem-goes-much-deeper-than-brian-
kemp/2018/10/20/67dab6c2-cd9b-11e8-a3e6-44daa3d35ede_story.html)

Also, voter fraud basically does not exist in the United States as per this
article from the Brennan Center:
[https://www.brennancenter.org/analysis/debunking-voter-
fraud...](https://www.brennancenter.org/analysis/debunking-voter-fraud-myth)

In fact, the most notable example of election fraud in the United States in
recent memory is in NC's 9th Congressional District, where it looks like the
Republican in the race cheated his way to victory:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_North_Carolina%27s_9th_co...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_North_Carolina%27s_9th_congressional_district_election#Refusal_of_certification)

 _edit: as burlesona rightly points out below, the article to which this
comment is attached is about the Lt. Gov. 's race. My comment is about the
general lack of integrity in Georgia's elections, and the deeply undemocratic
(small-D) results that emerge from this state of affairs._

~~~
Zecar
Wait, voter fraud doesn't exist but hey look it happened just last year?

~~~
aaronbrethorst
Exactly! what happened last year is _election fraud_ , which is why I called
it "election fraud" instead of "voter fraud."

An explainer: [https://www.vox.com/policy-and-
politics/2018/12/11/18134636/...](https://www.vox.com/policy-and-
politics/2018/12/11/18134636/north-carolina-9-election-fraud-voter-fraud)

~~~
Zecar
FYI, any attempt to steal an election is both (a) fraud and (b) treason, and I
don't even understand why you're trying to rules-lawyer a distinction here.

~~~
jakelazaroff
Because it's an important distinction. OP is using "voter fraud" to refer to
_voters_ acting fraudulently, and "election fraud" to refer to _election
officials_ acting fraudulently. Of particular importance here is that the
former is relatively rare (despite scaremongering by one side of the political
spectrum) while the latter is decidedly less so.

Also, legally, neither one is treason.

~~~
Zecar
> Also, legally, neither one is treason.

Haha ok man but no for real that's actual treason.

~~~
ascagnel_
It's both undemocratic (small-d) and un-American, but it doesn't fit the
rubric of "providing aid or comfort to the enemy" for treasonous behavior.

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AlphaWeaver
People have said it before, and it will be said again, but until we have much
more accountability and transparency, electronic voting machines are NOT to be
trusted and should not be used in any official capacity.

~~~
threatofrain
Paper ballots disappear too though, don't they? What do you do when elections
are expensive and you detect an error, and you can't find who cast the ballot?

~~~
macintux
It is resource-intensive yet viable to track every paper ballot throughout the
process. Digital ballots have no such guarantees.

The best option to me seems to be scanned paper ballots, which offers the
ability to perform analog recounts when there is suspicion of problems with
the digital count.

(Disclaimer: only a distant observer of this, there may be better options.)

~~~
threatofrain
For context like 2018 congressional elections, or 2020 elections, what does it
mean to track down paper ballots, such as to make sure the final count is
complete? At least it sounds like de-anonymizing votes.

Or does it mean it's so logistically unpalatable that you can bet on it not
happening? Same thing with recount as a remedy to detected anamoly; it's
theoretically possible. But is it so unpalatable that a gambler may gamble
well on an event?

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rblion
I wonder what will come of this now. Is there any way to have a 'redo'? If
there isn't, how could there ever be justice in the event this was
intentional?

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notroot
Ask anyone if their vote was counted. The only honest answer is, "I'm not
sure." That is concerning.

Seems like a good kind of work to spread, thanks for sharing.

~~~
WilliamEdward
What if every vote had an ID / random number attached to it, identifying you,
and then when they are counted every number that was read and counted gets
posted up on some database or broadcast, or even in paper form to be collected
at another polling station, so you know for sure your vote counted?

Just spitballing here, because it seems like an easy problem to solve, the US
is just notoriously stubborn when it comes to mixing up the election process.

~~~
cr1895
>What if every vote had an ID / random number attached to it, identifying you

Votes must not be attributable to any given person, or else the potential for
coercion exists.

~~~
jessaustin
I read GP as simply verifying that a particular ballot made it into the count,
_not_ verifying what the votes on that ballot happened to be. That seems less
problematic with respect to buying or coercing votes. I'm not convinced that
"lost ballots" are a big problem, but such a system would be a way of checking
that.

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benj111
A stylistic point perhaps, but the mention of Georgia makes me think of the
country, not the state. That's further reinforced by the missing votes (sorry
Georgia (country)), so its only by the time I got to 'African' that I got an
inkling that something was wrong, and instantly went back to reread the title
again, before noticing the last 2 words.

Shouldn't there be a convention of writing Georgia (US) or (state)?

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temp1928384
I can track my mail in ballot (as a resident of SF) on the SF elections
website...one reason among many why I prefer vs going in-person.

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pizza
If I were the one overseeing the election while also running for governor (as
Brian Kemp was, and now, successfully attained), I would do everything in my
power to make the election be as transparently fair as possible. But as far as
this Californian can tell, that was definitely not the case:

1\. the voting machines used were known well in advance to be badly vulnerable
[0]:

 _He said hackers could infect election computers by first gaining access to a
state employee’s computer, possibly by tricking him or her into clicking on a
dangerous link in an email. Once the malware is on one machine, it could reach
central election systems through internal networks, USB devices or memory
cards._

 _J. Alex Halderman prepares to demonstrate Monday at Georgia Tech how easy it
is to hack Georgia’s electronic voting machines. In a hypothetical election,
Halderman changed a 2-2 vote between George Washington and Benedict Arnold to
make Arnold the winner by 3-1._

 _Election computers could also be subverted in person, by someone like a
janitor or a temporary worker, Halderman said. Individual voting machines
could be tampered with if someone unlocked the latch that protects the memory
card port._

2\. He _reported security researchers_ (hired by state Democrats) _to the FBI_
for trying to 'hack the system' [1], whereas...

 _In 2015, Kemp’s office inadvertently released the Social Security numbers
and other identifying information of millions of Georgia voters. His office
blamed a clerical error._

 _[...]His office made headlines again last year after security experts
disclosed a gaping security hole that wasn’t fixed until six months after it
was first reported to election authorities. Personal data was again exposed
for Georgia voters — 6.7 million at the time — as were passwords used by
county officials to access files._

<eyeroll/>

3\. Georgia implemented a use-it-or-lose-it policy for voting. People found
out that because they didn't vote in the past that they had been purged from
the register of voters. That's insane to me, but apparently the Supreme Court
determined it was constitutional. Georgia also implemented extremely strict
name-matching (i.e. make sure that you did not use a hyphen when writing your
name one place and a space when writing it in another, because then they won't
match). [2]

 _But voting rights advocates fear that “use it or lose it” purges could be
used as a voter suppression tactic — along with voter ID requirements,
gerrymandering, polling place changes or closures, and registration obstacles
— that often help conservative candidates, because infrequent voters tend to
be younger, poorer and people of color who are more likely to favor Democrats.
For instance, the APM Reports investigation found that such purges in Ohio
disproportionately affected urban, Democratic-leaning counties._

[0] [https://www.ajc.com/news/state--regional-govt--
politics/how-...](https://www.ajc.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/how-
hack-elections-georgia-electronic-voting-machines/K4s5F935330BS6fGDm3CVI/)

[1] [https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/a-look-at-the-
election...](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/a-look-at-the-election-
security-charges-in-georgias-governors-race)

[2] [https://www.wabe.org/georgia-purged-about-107000-people-
from...](https://www.wabe.org/georgia-purged-about-107000-people-from-voter-
rolls-report/)

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kingkawn
Surrrrrrprise!

