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Mystery of missing votes deepens as Congress investigates Georgia:
To find a clue about what might have gone wrong with Georgia's election last fall, look no further than voting machine No. 3 at the Winterville Train Depot outside Athens.
On machine No. 3, Republicans won every race. On each of the other six machines in that precinct, Democrats won every race.The odds of an anomaly that large are less than 1 in 1 million, according to a statistician's analysis in court documents. The strange results would disappear if votes for Democratic and Republican candidates were flipped on machine No. 3.
It just so happens that this occurred in Republican Brian Kemp's home precinct, where he initially had a problem voting when his yellow voter access card didn't work because a poll worker forgot to activate it. At the time, Kemp was secretary of state — Georgia's top election official — and running for governor in a tight contest with Democrat Stacey Abrams.
The suspicious results in Winterville are evidence in the ongoing mystery of whether errors with voting machines contributed to a stark drop-off in votes recorded in the race for Georgia lieutenant governor between Republican Geoff Duncan, who ended up winning, and Democrat Sarah Riggs Amico.
Even though it was the second race on the ballot, fewer votes were counted for lieutenant governor than for labor commissioner, insurance commissioner and every other statewide contest lower on the ballot. Roughly 80,000 fewer votes were counted for lieutenant governor than in other down-ballot elections.
The potential voting irregularities were included among 15,500 pages of documents obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that have also been turned over to the U.S. House Oversight and Reform Committee, which is looking into Georgia's elections. The documents, provided under the Georgia Open Records Act, offer details of alleged voting irregularities but no answers.
Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger's office has refused to open an investigation. State election officials say the low number of votes could have been caused by low interest in the lieutenant governor's race or where that contest appeared on the ballot.
'It is not letting me vote for who I want': Video shows electronic machine changing ballot in Mississippi (Paywalled and/or Javascript required):
Over and over again, the man touches a box on an electronic voting machine to cast his ballot for Mississippi gubernatorial candidate Bill Waller Jr. And over and over again, the machine instead checks off a vote for Waller's opponent in Tuesday's GOP runoff, Mississippi Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves.
"How would that happen?" a woman exclaims in the background.
"It is not letting me vote for who I want to vote for," the man says.
The moment, captured on a video uploaded to Facebook and Twitter, where it's gotten nearly 750,000 views as of early Wednesday, shows one of at least three malfunctioning voting machines reported in two counties in Mississippi, state elections officials confirmed.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by stretch611 on Thursday August 29 2019, @09:12PM (7 children)
Exactly why this happened in GA.
Currently the state is in the hands of the republicans... Governor, State House, and State Senate. It has been this way for years, but the trend is that the state is moving from red to a swing state purple...
In 2018, the (then Secretary of State) Brian Kemp(R) beat out Stacey Abrams(D) in a squeaker of a race. Of course, it was pointed out that he should resign as Secretary of State due to a conflict of interest in the Secretary of State's main purpose of validating/verifying the election results and him running for governor. Of course he refused.
Prior to the election, there were multiple flaws pointed out in the election machines, including them being hacked and leaking out the Social Security Numbers of 6 million Georgia Voters(under Brian Kemp's watch.) Groups sued to have new machines installed and it was drawn out long enough that the judge was unable to force the removal of the machines before the 2018 elections. (I should note that the entire state uses the same flawed electronic voting machines, and none of them have a paper ballot.)
The last I heard on the TV news was that the State Government did allocate funds to get new voting machines across the state with a paper ballot. However even this is less than desired... the paper ballot will be having a barcode. (which can be hacked.) So after an election, the machine will print out a ballot with the names of the people you voted for. You can verify those names and then must turn in the receipt of that ballot before you leave the polling area. However, while you can verify the names, there will be no way to verify that the names correspond to the barcode that is printed; and of course, it is the barcode that would be used in a recount... not the actual names. People are not allowed to leave with the paper ballot, and photographs are not permitted by law at any polling place in GA. There are no plans whatsoever to verify barcodes against the printed names. Essentially, if someone where to hack these machines, the paper ballot is useless.
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 5, Insightful) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday August 29 2019, @10:08PM (6 children)
It always seems to be Republicans doesn't it?
When you add in the post election power grabs in Wisconsin, which they learned how to do from the Republicans in North Carolina and the rampant gerrymandering it is almost like they have no interest in governing responsibly.
As long as they own the libs, I suppose they're happy.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday August 29 2019, @10:13PM (2 children)
We have a hell of a lot of people on this site who work exactly like that. I don't understand the mindset that makes people act this way, and hope I never do...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday August 29 2019, @10:26PM (1 child)
This site is a long way from being the worst though.
I saw a comment on another site recently where some dim-bulb Fox News watcher was complaining about "Socialist Insurance" in your health insurance market.
Just stop and think about that for a second.
Yeah.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 30 2019, @04:53AM
"Get your government hands off my Medicare!"
The fact that I know a lot of people that think that is a good argument makes me concerned about their mental health and my ability to choose acquaintances.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Thexalon on Thursday August 29 2019, @11:43PM (2 children)
There's a reason it's the Republicans right now: If there were free and fair elections where every citizen could and did vote without hindrance in computer-generated districts, they'd lose, and lose badly, in a lot of places they currently have control.
There are places where election shenanigans get carried out by and for Democrats, such as Rhode Island.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Friday August 30 2019, @12:29AM (1 child)
I did read somewhere the the Republicans got 65% of the house seats in Wisconsin, despite only winning 38% of the votes cast which seems a bit off to me.
I would love to read about election shenanigans in Rhode Island, but haven't been able to find anything about it with a quick search.
I would not be surprised if both sides are at it.
(Score: 4, Informative) by dry on Friday August 30 2019, @04:21AM
If nothing else, the other side is likely to be forced to do it in defence. What else do you do if faced with cheating?
What gets me is this shit is spreading. Up here in Canada, we've had fair elections for a long time, until the last Federal election, when the Conservatives were in power and were heavily advised by the Republicans. They hamstrung Elections Canada as much as they could so they couldn't investigate irregularities properly or try to register voters, there was the robocall scandal (phoning Liberal voters and sending to wrong polling location), the corruption of our voter ID requirements which had been working fine for decades but they claimed there were non-citizens voting so they made changes designed to make it hard for certain demographics to vote. Residency to screw university requirements, needing a numbered address to screw the natives who usually lived somewhere without addresses and other weird shit like a really limited number of approved IDs.
My wife, a registered native who uses her maiden name, has all her ID in her maiden name and has always voted under her native name. We checked that she was correctly registered online (the only way to do it after the changes) and double checked before going to vote. Showed up and she was mysteriously registered under my surname, with no ID in that name. We expected that kind of shit so she showed up with marriage license and other documentation and spent a couple of hours with the election people on phone to Ottawa before she was allowed to do a provisional vote. Along with my son getting disenfranchised for not having good enough ID, this really turned me from pro voter ID to be against it. Just too easy to use to suppress and disenfranchise people, always under the argument that foreigners are illegally voting with no proof.