The Georgia Election Disaster: Heads Should Roll. Investigations Should Happen.

There was no willful voter fraud or suppression in Georgia yesterday. There was rank incompetence and technical failures.

The lines were, in most places, because several precincts in urban areas had to be consolidated at the last minute. They had to be consolidated because poll workers tested positive for COVID-19 or otherwise backed out of operating locations at the last minute.

The decisions were made at the local level by local officials, not by the Republican Secretary of State. Overwhelmingly, it was Democrat officials involved in Democrat areas.

To his credit, the Secretary of State also aggressively pushed absentee ballots. In fact, he processed and sent applications to every voter in the state over a six day period several months ago.

That overwhelmed local officials in counties who are responsible for processing the applications. Many of them had so many requests and so few staff that they never got all the ballots sent out in time. Likewise, a lot of voters got their absentee ballots and never mailed them back. They showed up on Election Day and had to vote provisional ballots because they were listed as having had absentee ballots.

The problems were not malicious. It is worth noting that the counties with the problems are the same counties that always have the problems. Fulton County, for example, is notoriously bad at running elections and it is overwhelming Democrat. Going back to the nineties when Democrats were firmly in control of the process, Fulton County ran out of paper ballots in 1996. The county just has issues.

But there were problems at the state level too. There needs to be a comprehensive investigation into picking the new voting machines in Georgia. I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt. They are a disaster and amplified local problems.

The machines are giant touch panels. A person places a card that has a chip on it in the machine and their ballot comes up. They scroll through checking boxes. They review their ballot. Then they submit their ballot. That process is seemingly straight forward.

But then the ballot is printed on a duplexing laser printer. The voter then takes the paper ballot to a large container with a scanner on top and feeds it through the scanner where it falls, securely, into the hopper.

Except in some cases the counties hold the paper in piles and the voters don’t do it. They must assume someone will do it. More than one precinct refused to let voters do it themselves.

Also, if the paper is wet, the scanner has problems. It poured down rain across Georgia yesterday, which got paper humid and wet, which jammed the machines.

Likewise, polls are run mostly by senior citizens and we’re asking them to fix printer jams for laser printers, constantly add paper to laser printers, deal with scanner jams, etc.

The process was far too complex.

The previous electronic machines made it super easy for the disabled and senior citizens to vote. To satisfy demands for paper receipts, the state chose a system that is far too complex with too many moving parts, cords, devices, etc.

There needs to be a full investigation into how that system was chosen.

The bottom line is that there was no malicious intent, no suppression, and no fraud. There was a virus, a lot of incompetence, absent poll workers, and a rainstorm all colliding on the day brand new voting machines were used by voters for the first time.