The Coalition for Good Governance – a watchdog nonprofit that focuses on issues about election security and transparency – recently sent an email to members of the Georgia House and Senate asking them to review an elections situation in Sumter County after voters wrote in names like Mickey Mouse, Jimmy Buffett, Donald Duck and hundreds of other names on their ballots in a low-profile South Georgia race.
The Coalition says the votes were “unlawfully counted as votes for the sole eligible candidate Jeffery Clements – apparently misuse of software by an elections office insider.
The elections watchdog group says the results show how results could be altered.
The Secretary of State’s office recently opened an investigation into the 1,623-vote miscount, which wasn’t detected by an audit of the November election situation. According to reports, Georgia election officials said the mistake was isolated to a down-ballot race that required a manual review of write-in votes. They said election audits verified the accuracy of most voters’ choices but didn’t include write-ins.
The Coalition says in the letter to the lawmakers that the ballot image audit performed after the election “wrongly reported near-perfect accuracy and concealed significant discrepancies.”
They also allege that there was a built-in conflict of interest because the audits were conducted by the same people who manage elections — the secretary of state’s office and Enhanced Voting, which also runs the state’s election results website.
According to reports in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Sumter County Election Supervisor LaSandra Patterson acknowledged the error in an email to state election officials, saying she misunderstood instructions when she assigned all 1,750 write-in votes to Jeffery Clements, the lone candidate for Lower Chattahoochee River Soil and Water Conservation District Supervisor.
The Coalition says approximately 130 voters actually wrote in Clements name on the ballot, while over 1,600 voters typed in various names or comments. They allege these votes were “unlawfully credited to Clements during an eight-hour electronic operation by an election supervisor signed in as ‘EMS Administrator’ using a voting system application om Friday and Saturday after the election.”
Mike Hassinger, a spokesperson for the secretary of state’s office, reportedly said a statewide audit double-checked election results by comparing the text of ballots with the machine count.
Aaron Wilson, president of Enhanced Voting, which conducted the audit for Georgia, said the audit reviewed whether a voter wrote in a candidate’s name, but it didn’t audit which name was written
“Checking the names written on ballots wasn’t within the audit’s scope,” he was reported as saying.
Marilyn Marks, executive director for the Coalition for Good Governance, said the secretary of state’s office misrepresented the accuracy of the audit.
“There is no justification for over 1,600 votes for noncandidates, including cartoon characters, being unlawfully counted for the winning candidate, nor for the $1.5 million so-called ballot image ‘audit’ failing to disclose these egregious irregularities,” Marks said.
As a result of this, the Coalition for Good Governance is proposing several legislative reforms:
● Restrict use of several electronic vote changing tools and require thorough paper audit trails for all vote changes
● Strengthen vendor and procurement oversight
● Ensure independent investigations
● Mandate transparency
● Enforce reporting requirements
