Two Ideas for Georgia Elections
I have been volunteering for elections in Bulloch County for the last 12 years, chiefly in the area of absentee ballots. I am definitely not an expert and I continue to learn at each election, but there are a couple of items that stuck out to me in this year’s general election:
- The rule to allow 15 day period to process, but not tabulate, absentee ballots needs to remain permanently
- Races without a qualified write-in candidate do not need to have an option to write in a name
15 Day Absentee Ballot Period
The State Election Board passed a rule in August that provided a 15 day period prior to the election date that allowed for absentee ballots to be opened and processed, but not tabulated. Approximately 20 hours were spent on absentee ballots by about a dozen people in Bulloch County over a three-day period prior to the election and on election night itself. Just imagine trying to do that beginning at 7 p.m. on election night.
If the process worked so well during this time of a pandemic, it should stand that it be continued as standard practice. Even if there are a lot fewer absentee ballots, the County would have the option to open early or not.
Non-Qualified Write-Ins
It is fairly easy to become a qualified write-in candidate in Georgia. File a notice of intention, run a classified ad, and then submit a notarized affidavit and a copy of that ad.
What’s not easy? Processing ballots with non-qualified candidates written in that will ultimately not count. We usually have a chuckle or two talking about the different names written in, but once you go through 434 absentee ballots on election night that have write-ins to pull out the 4 ballots that actually have a qualified candidate on them, it gets a little less funny. I don’t know the process for electronic ballots, but I did observe that the paper ballots with write-ins from electronic voting were having to be kept separate from the other ballots.
An easy remedy is to remove the option to write-in for races that do not have qualified candidates for both absentee ballots and electronic ballots. Don’t want to vote for any candidates that appear on a race? Skip it and move on.
About Author
lawtonsack
Lawton is a graduate of Georgia Southern University (the GSU) with a degree in Information Technology. He has held numerous positions within the Georgia Republican Party throughout the years.
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Wonk Alert!
You can be Charlie Bucket and I will be Willie Wonka.
Interesting but believe it or not I have heard conflicting information from “poll officials” I put this in quotes because I only know they work or worked at the poles in the past at some capacity. What I was told was you should fill in every box even if you don’t want to vote for a candidate. I have heard various reasons from it causes a problem with the counting machines to not voting in all races will cause your ballot to be kick out for a review. Then it may or may not be counted. I always thought the rest of the ballot would count if you left a race blank because you just couldn’t vote for someone. An often occurrence in local races due to no opposition. But as you pointed out “Processing ballots with non-qualified candidates written in that will ultimately not count.” You mean voting for the race for the particular office will not count but the rest of the ballot will count, I hope.
I didn’t know the rules about becoming a write in candidate, interesting. I favor adding a box that is for “none of the above” so the voters could have a do over but before I see that it will be a very cold day in a very warm place I fear.
I don’t think, and hope as well, that any ballots– or even votes on other individual races– would be rejected because of an error made in one race’s checkbox/space. But it would be nice to hear such things from an official with actual knowledge. I sense a good public information campaign.
Gabriel Sterling from SoS office was just on 11Alive and answered some of these concerns. He did say that over-votes in one race may be pulled from the machines for human review/adjudication, where a bipartisan team assesses voter intent. But an error in one race does not invalidate the entire ballot. And he didn’t mention an under-vote as something that would trigger the machine to pull for review. And of course, valid votes in any races shouldn’t be rejected in any event. Perhaps a little comforting.
Why was the absentee ballot so large? I get it that some of us geezers don’t see so well but there was a huge amount of white space and if vision impairment is the reason there is a provision for allowing assistance anyway. Given the size, completely filling in the bubble with a ballpoint is a pain as well. More importantly, it has to be cumbersome for the poll workers to manipulate 3+ million of the things, especially given doing it all over again in the inevitable recount.
How are the opened absentee ballots secured over that 15 day period? If we maintain this year’s provision and I agree that we should, do we have to codify the handling of the opened ballots so that everyone is satisfied?
The lead time on processing also gives people whose ballots get rejected time to remedy them. Better for everybody.