Restore Secret Ballots for Georgia Voters by Reducing Touchscreen Voting [View all]

[diva77]

Action Alert from Coalitionforgoodgovernance.org

Call to Action: Contact Georgia State Election Board to urge rule adoption to reduce touchscreen voting to ensure ballot secrecy and security. Details follow.

We at CGG are committed to the principle that ballots must be voted in secret, but never counted in secret. Georgia has it backwards—forcing voting selections publicly displayed on touchscreens, and then counting those votes in a secret non-transparent process.

Almost all Georgians who have voted a polling place since early 2020 have encountered the large touchscreens publicly displaying voters’ selections to other individuals in the polling place. Yet the right to a secret ballot is guaranteed in the Georgia Constitution and in numerous clear Georgia laws requiring voting in “absolute secrecy” so that “no person can see or know” how another person votes. Georgia has a long tradition of legally mandating a secret ballot to safeguard the expression of the voters’ will since 1890. Georgia's secret ballot laws are so strong that it is a felony in Georgia for an election official to disclose or display how voters vote.


But with the 2020 deployment of the Dominion touchscreen BMD system, Secretary Raffensperger and the State Election Board have refused to defend voters’ rights to privacy, choosing instead to defend the ill-considered $150+ million purchase of the unverifiable touchscreen voting system. By insisting on the unconditional use of the privacy-invading touchscreens, state officials also put the local election officials in an impossible position of violating state and federal law.


But there is an immediate way to vindicate these fundamental rights by insisting that the State Election Board address this issue, making it clear that county officials must put voters’ rights over the vendor's interest, despite conflicting direction coming from Secretary Raffensperger and the Board since 2020.

SNIP

=============

Lengthy but very important action alert with lots of links as well. Worth checking out. CGG got rid of paperless touchscreens for GA - compare how Ossoff did in his first election (which he lost) when they were used vs. his 2nd election (which he won) when they were not used. Hopefully they will be able to get rid of the BMDs.