COLUMN: Investigate the election

The Georgia legislature needs to investigate the primary elections in Georgia. It was a disaster. There was no malice. There was no attempt to suppress or defraud voters. A confluence of events including a virus, severe thunderstorms, gross incompetence, poor training, and new equipment caused the problems.

To his credit, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger anticipated problems and, over a six day period, mailed every single Georgia voter an absentee ballot application. Local governments, which actually handle the processing of those applications, did not anticipate the flood of incoming applications and consequently were too short staffed to get them all out in time.

On election day, some people had gotten their absentee ballots, but forgot to send them back. They showed up at the polls and had to vote provisionally, which slowed down the lines. Others showed up who had not gotten their absentee ballots. More than one person got their absentee ballot envelope in the mail, but failed to have an actual ballot in the envelope. They had to show up too.

Just before election day, some poll workers tested positive for COVID-19. In Atlanta, five precincts of approximately 7,000 registered voters each had to be consolidated into a single location because of that. There just were not enough poll workers. Combine the people showing up to vote with provisional ballots and the consolidated precincts and the crowds grew.

Beyond the crowds, the elections used new machines. Georgia was under a federal judge’s order to stop using their old machines. So the state started training for the new machines they were already buying. When the virus hit, that training had to go to online meetings. Many of the people training the poll workers were also new to the machines. That slowed the process down.

Then there were the machines themselves. If any federal judge reads this, I recommend an order that these machines be prohibited from further use. While I appreciate electronic voting and, in theory, it should speed up and make for a more accurate count, these machines are a disaster. Only the consultants who made serious money off them could love them. Whoever in our state government thought these machines were a good idea should be tied to a horse and driven from the state of Georgia and barred from returning on pain of death. The machines are that bad.

In 2000, after the disaster in Florida’s election, most states began abandoning paper ballots for electronic ballots. Both the disabled and senior citizens have an easier time touching a screen than holding a pen to fill in a bubble or punch out a chad (remember them). Georgia’s machines were stand alone devices into which a person placed an electronic card to activate the machine. A vote was cast. The voter hit a button on the screen. The card popped out. The voter left.

The new system involved an iPad to check in the voter; a machine into which an electronic card is placed; a duplex laser printer to print a ballot once voted; a scanner to scan that ballot; and a sorting box under the scanner in which the ballots are secured. There were too many moving parts and it turns out the scanners rejected ballots on paper that got wet from the storms while the scanners and printers repeatedly jammed due to the thick ballot paper.

These machines should be destroyed and there should be an investigation into how anyone could have thought they would improve the system. No one maliciously tried to screw up the election. But it happened anyway.

Erick Erickson is host of the Erick Erickson Show on News-Talk 940 WMAC