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June 17, 2010 - Revised July 17, 2010
South Carolina Proves Statewide Unverifiable Voting Cannot Be Trusted
Alvin Greene won the U.S. Senate Democratic primary with a near landslide 60-40% edge in unverifiable Election Day voting on ES&S IVotronic machines, but Vic Rawl prevailed in the verifiable paper ballot absentee mail-in count by a solid 55-45% margin. How can that be?
Click here to view spreadsheet of stunning variances in verifiable & unverifiable vote counts
Click here for letter sent by VoterGa to the South Carolina State Elections Commission
May 24, 2010
Former Secretary of State's Performance Marred by Flip, Flop, Lobbyist Influence and Politically Motivated Conduct
Click Here for complete analysis
April 22, 2010
VoterGA Challenges KSU Elections Center to Voting Machine Debate
Click Here for letter to executive director
March 22, 2010
Impeachment articles Filed in GA House Against Secretary of State's Inspector General
Click Complaints tab for details
March 13, 2010
House Bill Proposes Open Ballot Access to All Candidates
ATLANTA, GA – A new bill that was introduced in the Georgia House of Representatives last week would open election ballots by removing the petitioning requirements that are currently imposed on all third party and independent candidates who want to run in local or statewide races. The bipartisan bill, HB1257, would also save time and money for state and counties by eliminating signature verification. It was introduced by Reps. Alan Powell, Tom McCall, Mark Hatfield and “Rusty” Kidd.
Any candidate who is not a Republican or Democrat, must currently gather thousands of signatures from registered voters who are qualified to vote for the candidate before their name can be placed on the ballot in a State House, State Senate, U.S. House or other partisan local race. Only Democrats, Republicans and Libertarians can name statewide candidates now without petitioning.
Georgia is currently ranked by Ballot Access News as having the most restrictive ballot access laws in the country. Some restrictions are 10 times more than the national average of all other states combined. For example, Georgia requires a political party to receive 20% of votes cast in the last gubernatorial or presidential race to run a full slate of candidates. That barrier is ten times the national median of about 2%. Likewise, Georgia requires a third party U.S. House candidate to collect verified signatures from 5% of the registered voters in the district before their name can be placed on the ballot. That barrier is 10 times the average of about .5% that is required by other states.
The restrictions have resulted in a perpetual lack of qualified candidates throughout Georgia. No 3rd party U.S. House candidate has qualified for a normal election since 1943 when existing laws were passed. Only about 39% of all State House races have been contested by both a Republican and a Democrat. Only 44% of legislative races were contested by both a Democrat and Republican in 2004, 17 points below the 61% national average. Georgia is also ranked worst in the nation for political party presidential qualification, having an average of just 1.2 3rd party presidential candidates on the ballot since 1972. In 2008, six presidential candidates were on ballots in enough states to mathematically win the Electoral College but only three of them were on the ballot in Georgia.
Petitioning has recently come under fire due to claims of mistreatment by petitioners. Former Chatham County Republican Commissioner, Jeff Rayno, was referred for a felony investigation in a December 2009 State Election Board meeting on grounds that he forged petition signatures although no forged signature was produced. He filed a U.S. Justice complaint against former chairwoman, Karen Handel, and her Inspector General, Shawn LaGrua, who still works in the Secretary of State’s office. In another case, a petitioner was arrested at a park while trying to collect signatures for a Green party candidate.
The proposed legislation would move Georgia from being ranked as one of the top five most restrictive states in every type of race to a more open ballot access state such as Florida. While offering Georgia voters more freedom of choice, it still maintains qualification fees to deter frivolous candidates. Nevertheless, the bill is expected to encounter opposition from the General Assembly leadership team and partisans in both sides of the legislature. House Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman, Mark Hamilton, will now determine if the bill will get a hearing. A similar but far less comprehensive measure, HB1141, was removed from the hearing schedule last week.
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Feb 24, 2010 SEB dismisses Gallegos from further action
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Feb 22, 2010 - AJC's Jim Galloway criticizes legislators for introducing HB 1215
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Feb. 22, 2010,
House Bill Introduced to Ban GA Voting Machines
ATLANTA, GA – A new bill was introduced in the Georgia House of Representatives last week that would essentially outlaw existing electronic voting machines used on Election Day in Georgia and allow them to be replaced with optical scan voting equipment. The bipartisan bill, HB1215, is now under consideration in the House Governmental Affairs Committee. It was introduced by Rep. Tim Bearden, the vice chair of the committee and co-signed by several representatives including Karla Drenner and Austin Scott, the former chair of the committee.
Georgia’s voting machines have been criticized, even prior to acquisition in 2002, for an inability to produce election results that can be properly verified, audited and recounted. The voting machines lack a Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) system that was available on other machines at that time. The servers also lack audit trail functions necessary to detect vote manipulation that could occur at the county or state levels. The law when purchased required the machines to produce an independent audit trail of each vote cast but officials have since admitted that no such independent audit trail exists.
HB1215 would not only ban existing electronic voting machines but also prohibit use of lever machines that do not produce a recorded ballot. It also includes language that requires mandatory, random audit procedures to be conducted at each precinct after the polls close. The intent is to confirm that votes are being counted correctly on Election Day at the source where they are originally created.
In addition, HB1215 mandates recounts by hand to ensure that any tabulation errors in optical scan equipment used on Election Day are not carried over to the recount. Critics have explained that recent recounts conducted in Atlanta and Roswell mayoral races did not actually recount votes. Electronic results were re-accumulated from internal records that were never verified by the voter. Absentee ballots were rescanned without determining whether or not the vote tabulators functioned correctly.
A new statewide optical scan voting system implementation would require an initial capital outlay of more than $30 million or just over one half of what that state spent on electronic voting equipment and related education in 2002. However, the equipment would be expected to pay for itself in about three election cycles and begin saving the state and counties money after that. Costs of logic and accuracy testing, operational procedures, technical support and logistical activities would be significantly reduced. The savings could be achieved because each precinct would require only one optical scan counter and a ballot marker for the visually impaired instead of up to two dozen voting machines.
Georgia’s AccuVote TSR6 voting machines and tabulation servers were originally purchased from Diebold Inc. just after it acquired them from Global Election Systems. Once equipment fallacies were exposed and intense national scrutiny ensued, Diebold spun off the division and changed its name to Premier Elections Systems. It is now attempting to sell Premier to ES&S in a deal that would result in a single vendor tabulating nearly 70% of America’s votes, often using unverifiable voting equipment.
Georgia is the only state in the union planning to conduct statewide elections in 2010 using unverifiable voting equipment from a single vendor. Most other states have already moved to ban, decertify, replace or suspend the use of similar Diebold electronic voting machines. Nevertheless, history indicates that the office of new Secretary of State Brian Kemp is likely to oppose the measure.
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THURSDAY, FEB. 4, 2010,
RAYNO ASKS U.S. JUSTICE DEPT. TO INVESTIGATE CONSTITUITIONAL VIOLATIONS
BY HANDEL, LAGRUA - SEE COMPLAINTS
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THURSDAY, JAN. 14, 2010,
LAGRUA'S CASE AGAINST LAURA GALLEGOS DISMISSED
AFTER QUESTIONABLE PROSECUTION - SEE COMPLAINTS
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MONDAY, JAN. 4, 2010,
JIM COLES WITHDRAWS FROM S.O.S. CONSIDERATION
BRIAN KEMP IS APPOINTED S.O.S. AND TELLS AJC:
"I will continue the honorable tradition of leadership demonstrated by Karen Handel, Cathy Cox, Lewis Massey, and others before them.”.
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FRIDAY DEC. 31, 2009,
PURDUE ANNOUNCES SELECTION OF JIM COLE AS S.O.S.
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TUESDAY DEC. 29, 2009, SONNY PERDUE APPOINTS SHAWN LAGRUA TO JUDGESHIP
IN THE ATLANTA JUDICIAL CICUIT
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MONDAY DEC. 28, 2009, GOVERNOR PERDUE'S OFFICE CONFIRMS RECEIPT AND DELIVERY
OF LETTER WITH NOTICE OF COMPLAINTS FILED AGAINST LAGRUA
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TUESDAY DEC. 22, 2009,
KAREN HANDEL RESIGNS TO RUN FOR GOVERNOR FULL TIME
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MONDAY DEC. 21, 2009,
MEDIA IS INFORMED OF COMPLAINTS REGARDING
SHAWN LAGRUA'S INVESTIGATIONS
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WEDNESDAY DEC. 16, 2009,
THREE CITIZENS FILE THREE DIFFERENTCOMPLAINTS
AGAINST KAREN HANDEL'S INSPECTOR GENERAL, SHAWN LAGRUA
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Attention all county Election Directors in Georgia - click here for a critical letter
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VOTERGA Supporters,
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