It didn’t get widespread statewide attention but, on the May 21st primary election night Bibb and Coffee Counties had frustrating election problems which caused vote tabulation delays. The concerning thing is that both counties also suffered cyberattacks just before the primary. Experts disagree on whether this was a contributor to the problems, but critics wonder if there is a relationship and that a skilled forensics expert (beyond what Secretary of State’s office can do) needs to investigate with that office’s approval.
Even though state law requires a county’s vote tally to be done by midnight of primary election day, total Bibb tallies were not reported until late morning the next day due to “technical issues” aggravating local elections workers, The Macon Telegraph reported.
The Secretary of State’s website, which reports live election results, stated 100 percent of the county’s results were reported first thing Wednesday morning. However, Supervisor of Elections Tom Gillon declared that was inaccurate. It wasn’t until around 11:30 a.m. when the county was able to get all votes accounted for.
Early votes were added later the next day
Five of seven tabulators which calculated early voting totals were not confirmed by 9 a.m. Wednesday, Gillon told The Telegraph. This meant results from three important early voting locations – Macon Mall, Theron Ussery Park and the Elaine Lucas Senior Center – were not added to the total tallied votes until later in the morning.
The issue came down to memory cards. “We had to scan some ballots that we were hoping to use a memory card for,” Gillon said. “We were able to print the results of all of them … but just the memory cards themselves weren’t uploading so we had to scan all the ballots from those tabulators, which took a while,” Gillon said.
Memory card failure has all too often been cited by the Secretary of State’s office in recent years as a troublesome problem in various counties. Some early voting Bibb ballots were also re-scanned because the tabulators could not read the original versions. But so far no one knows why certain tabulators rejected some ballots.
Even “small” errors are significant
With regard to Coffee County, county election workers and Committee for Good Governance observers who were welcomed to watch found a discrepancy in the audit that was conducted two days later. The official machine tally for the Supreme Court early voting batch selected was John Barrow 657 and incumbent Andrew Pinson 899. But the hand count showed Barrow 655 and Pinson 901. A minor difference in an audit, some might say. But whether it was human error or machine error, it is necessary to determine what happened.
Consider this: It is a .13 percent error. But remember that the vote difference between 2020 presidential candidates Joe Biden and Donald Trump in Georgia was .24 percent. Small numbers can really make a difference. That’s why election observers know that it’s crucial that audits investigate any error to ensure that it is not a systemic one that can affect the entire election.
Uniform canvassing rules are needed
A big question looms: Are obtaining and checking results from an unverifiable voting system too complex for all too many county election boards to master in a meaningful way? Critics note the Secretary of State and the State Election Board do not have clear uniform rules for the canvassing of the election returns and the post-election so-called audits that are undertaken. (And their failure is why a lawsuit challenging Fulton County’s wrongful withholding of basic public records for canvassing was just filed.)
“With a sure-to-be controversial November election just 22 weeks away, it is incumbent on the State Election Board to wake from their years’ long snoozing on rule-making to make comprehensive, clear, mandatory rules on post-election processes to increase transparency, accuracy and reduce opportunities for controversy,” says Marilyn Marks of the Committee for Good Governance.
