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Conservative and Progressive Groups Unite to Pressure Georgia Gov. Kemp to Ensure Safe, Secure Elections in November
Americans for Tax Reform, R Street, Public Citizen, National Election Defense Coalition and others call for immediate investment in voter-verified paper ballots and COVID-19 security measures
July 16, 2020 – Georgia’s chaotic June primary – plagued by long lines, equipment failure and lack of preparation amid the COVID-19 pandemic – sets the stage for a disastrous November election if immediate steps aren’t taken by the state, said a group of conservative and progressive organizations in a letter to Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. The letter calls on Georgia’s leaders to appropriate funds for low-cost security options, including markedly increasing the number of backup paper ballots for voters choosing to vote in-person.
The letter also called for drastically reducing the use of insecure, error prone touchscreen voting machines and to fund measures that would provide safe in-person voting options to prevent chaos on Election Day.
Despite a surge in mail-in ballots, cities like Atlanta saw an influx of in-person voters even as a number of polling site locations closed due to the pandemic. As polling locations became more crowded, provisional ballots ran out and poll workers struggled to operate new voting equipment with little training.
“Safety of voters and election security should never be partisan issues,” said Ben Ptashnik, former Vermont State Senator and President of the National Election Defense Coalition (NEDC). “Citizens who prefer to vote in-person should not have to worry about contracting or spreading the COVID-19 infection and it is up to the State of Georgia to use the federal funds appropriated by Congress last November to hire and train enough young poll workers to make sure all of Georgia’s citizens can safely vote at the polls.”
“Our elections should be ironclad, and we benefit from using paper ballots and being able to double-check the results,” said Grover Norquist, President of Americans for Tax Reform. “The steps outlined in this letter will help Georgia shore up elections in 2020 and beyond.”
“Georgia should immediately disconnect all voting systems from the internet, and also work with the Department of Homeland Security and the EAC to ensure elections are conducted securely,” said former Pentagon cyber security expert Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer (ret), President of the Conservative London Center for Policy Research. “We already know that the threat to our elections is real and foreign actors are trying to cast doubt on the integrity of November’s election. There are concrete steps states like Georgia can take now to ensure voters stay safe and elections are not manipulated. Voter verified paper ballots are in both counts the safest way to vote. The State should also provide every voting precinct with a printed hard copy of the poll book lists of registered voters, to back up any problem with electronic poll books that are connected to the Internet, and might easily be hacked.”
The letter, signed by groups like NEDC, Americans for Tax Reform, Public Citizen, R Street, FreedomWorks and others, addresses the issues with insecure voting machines like the ones in Georgia while directing the state to spend federal funds in cost-effective ways to secure the November election. These include:
· Ensure that voting machines produce human-readable, voter-verified paper ballots
· Conduct post-election, risk-limiting audits
· Ban all voting technologies that allow internet connectivity
· Place emergency back-up ballots in all precincts
· Limit the use of touchscreen machines to mitigate the spread of COVID-19
· Implement 24/7 video monitoring of all ballot processing areas
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