The State Board of Elections in Georgia passed a rule requiring a hand count of all ballots in the November elections. The board was split 3-2. The majority are Trump allies. They passed the rule over strong criticism.
Republicans advanced the measure over the opposition of Georgia’s Republican secretary of state and attorney general and dozens of local election officials who said the last-minute change could cause delays and confusion on election night and the days that follow.
“If this board votes to implement this rule, I think that we put ourselves in legal jeopardy,” said John Fervier, the board’s nonpartisan chair, who voted against the proposal.
Under the proposed rule change, each voting district would compare the machine vote to a hand count. Local officials complained about lack of time and resources, in a process that could delay certification of the votes by weeks or even months.
Imagine waiting months to know who was elected!
Yet another Trump-inspired blow to the integrity of our electoral system.
Where Trump goes, chaos follows.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Imagine it’s December and the Georgia vote is still undecided. Does the state simply not vote in the Electoral College? Does the state legislature step in and decide how the state’s electoral votes are cast? Does SCOTUS interfere partway through the counting process?
Imagine there’s similar chaos in multiple states and the Electoral College vote is 250-250 with some states still counting. Harris has won the popular vote by 4 million votes, of those counted; Democrats take the House; Republicans take the Senate. Lawsuits are filed at the state and federal levels. Court decisions are slow, then appealed. Brooks Brother mafia descends on tabulation sites.
Imagine it’s so chaotic that the vote goes to the House for resolution. Each state’s House delegation gets one vote. States with an evenly divided delegation don’t vote at all. DC doesn’t get a vote. It’s easy to imagine Trump being elected with a minority of the popular vote, less than half of the electoral vote, and a Democratic House because of the one-state, one-vote rule.
Meanwhile, the Senate chooses the vice president. There’s no requirement that the two people selected through this procedure are the same party since the Constitution doesn’t mention political parties.
The Republican campaign appears to be counting on chaos.
LikeLike
hand-counting on chaos …
LikeLike
Stephen,
I think you just described the Republican election strategy. Get the decision to the House, where each state gets one vote. Republicans hold 26 states. Trump wins.
LikeLike
The NPR report was clear that the requirement was only to manually verify that the number of ballots being placed in each box matched the machine count. This is not a manual tabulation of all votes in all races as implied by many commentators. While it’s not an unreasonable element to include in the voting process, making last-minute changes works against any rational interpretation of “election integrity”.
Election certification boards must be focused on systems, not results. Certify 60 days before the election that all personnel have been trained, all systems are working as intended and contingency plans are in place. Afterwards certify that everything worked as intended.
LikeLike
I am a precinct worker in Florida, so different state, different system, different rules.
The ballots (sequentially numbered and containing the precinct number) come in sealed packets of 25. We count each packet when we open it. We only open as many packets as required. We do not share tablets of ballots between workers.
At any point, we can match the number of ballots issued thru electronic poll registers (Evid) with the number of ballots cast in the voting machine. If there are many people at the voting booths, it’s harder, but still doable.
At the end of the night, we reconcile the number of ballots we received from the county election office with the number distributed and the number voted.
There are special circumstances — provisional ballots, spoiled ballots (we give voters three opportunities to complete a ballot), and ballots on a special machine that can read the ballot to a voter into earphones or as braille. These are few enough that they aren’t especially difficult to reconcile.
The electronic poll register tells us if you were mailed a ballot and if you’ve returned it. If you were mailed a ballot and didn’t return it, you’ll be issued a ballot. The one you were mailed becomes invalid. If you already voted by mail, you will not be issued a ballot.
Lots of checks and balances.
What Georgia proposes to do is count the ballots once they’re back at election HQ to ensure the total number of ballots issued is accurate.
I can’t imagine what they’d do with that information. Precinct 46A received 750 ballots and issued 425. The voting machine says 425 votes cast. In counting at three a.m., they only found 424 paper ballots. What do you do? Count them again. Make sure none of the ballots from 46A ended up in the pile from 47C. They would have arrived separately.
Who’s writing the procedures? Who is training on the procedures in addition to all the other mandatory training? By Florida law, we train and are tested before each election. November will be the third state-wide election this year (Presidential primary, regular August primary, general election) not counting municipal elections and runoffs, for which we also train.
LikeLike
Stephen, thank you for your service.
LikeLike
can someone explain to me why these idiots think that hand counting is more accurate? Anyone who has hand counted any sizeable numbers knows that hand counting is less valid.
Make it make sense.
LikeLike
Georgia elections board knows that hand counting is less accurate than machine counting. They want reason to NOT certify some districts, ie those that are not for Trump.
LikeLike
Traitor Trump is like a stage 4 cancer, out of control, and destroying the body everywhere the Toxic Trump virus touches.
LikeLike