Georgia'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 nation’s 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 County’s 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 voter’s ballot marks to be counted when the voter intent can be determined, regardless of how the computer interprets the voter’s mark. These “X’s” 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 elector’s 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 “x’s” 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 Tuesday’s election. Details will be provided this weekend for Tuesday’s 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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Coalitionforgoodgovernance.org is a very effective organization based in Georgia. Please donate if you can.
= new reply since forum marked as read
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
