Important context from the executive summary that is missing from the headline:<p>- the missing votes are from the Lt. Governors race only, not the total ballot<p>- many people reported software glitches with that specific ballot item<p>- the study blames faulty programming and insists the state not use electronic voting since it apparently is not reliable<p>Their conclusions are strongly worded but sound reasonable to me.<p>Quoted from the executive summary:<p>• 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.<p>• Electronic voting systems must be immediately abandoned and paper ballots adopted so that no future elections are conducted on Georgia’s unauditable machines.<p>• 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.
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.<p>The race was decided by a margin of about 55,000 votes in Kemp's favor.<p>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.<p>More info: <a href="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" rel="nofollow">https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/georgias-voter-suppr...</a><p>Also, voter fraud basically does not exist in the United States as per this article from the Brennan Center: <a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/analysis/debunking-voter-fraud-myth" rel="nofollow">https://www.brennancenter.org/analysis/debunking-voter-fraud...</a><p>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: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_North_Carolina%27s_9th_congressional_district_election#Refusal_of_certification" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_North_Carolina%27s_9th_co...</a><p><i>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.</i>
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.
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?
Ask anyone if their vote was counted. The only honest answer is, "I'm not sure." That is concerning.<p>Seems like a good kind of work to spread, thanks for sharing.
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.<p>Shouldn't there be a convention of writing Georgia (US) or (state)?
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:<p>1. the voting machines used were known well in advance to be badly vulnerable [0]:<p><i>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.</i><p><i>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.</i><p><i>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.</i><p>2. He <i>reported security researchers</i> (hired by state Democrats) <i>to the FBI</i> for trying to 'hack the system' [1], whereas...<p><i>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.</i><p><i>[...]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.</i><p><eyeroll/><p>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]<p><i>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.</i><p>[0] <a href="https://www.ajc.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/how-hack-elections-georgia-electronic-voting-machines/K4s5F935330BS6fGDm3CVI/" rel="nofollow">https://www.ajc.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/how-...</a><p>[1] <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/a-look-at-the-election-security-charges-in-georgias-governors-race" rel="nofollow">https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/a-look-at-the-election...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.wabe.org/georgia-purged-about-107000-people-from-voter-rolls-report/" rel="nofollow">https://www.wabe.org/georgia-purged-about-107000-people-from...</a>