Georgia on my mind

 Today the good citizens of Georgia cast their ballots in the United States Senate runoff election. I have a somewhat unique view on voting in Georgia. Carol and I lived there for a time. We were registered voters and voted in elections. When you vote in person you must present valid photo identification and sign a request for a ballot. You are give a card about the size of a credit card to insert in the voting machine. It has a touch pad. You go through and touch the screen to indicate your choice in each race. When you are done you press to indicate you have completed voting. The machine then prints out a paper ballot that you review to insure your vote was properly marked. You walk the ballot over to another machine and insert it into the slot. It is processed into the ballot box. You have finished you civic duty. If you requested an absentee ballot you can sign a form swearing it was not returned and cast a provisional ballot. There has been plenty of allegations of voter fraud regarding the presidential election in Georgia. I will address a couple of those allegations. 

First, that ballots in Fulton County were scanned multiple times. If you recall because of the narrow margin of victory a hand recount was required by Georgia law. If ballots were scanned multiple times during the initial count it would show up in the hand recount when the ballots were not run through a machine. The fact is the vote total did not change significantly. So that allegation is bullshit. 

Second, signatures did not match on requests for absentee ballots and when the ballots were returned the signatures did not match the voter registration form. There are a few problems with this. A signature check was done before the ballot was sent out. Another signature comparison was done when the ballot was returned in the privacy envelope. After that comparison the ballot is separated from the envelope to insure the privacy of the vote. A sample comparison was done in one county which revealed that 99.99% of the signatures compared were valid. In cases where there was a question the voter was contacted to determine if they were the person who voted. There was no indication of fraud in that substantial but limited sampling. Once the ballots are separated from the envelopes there is no way to reunite them to determine how the individual voted. The relief requested would require invalidation of thousands of votes. It appears that very few, if any, votes were illegitimately cast. 

Finally, Georgia has a Republican Governor and a Republican Secretary of State. If the vote was in any way questionable the would be pressing for a solution. It is also interesting that the down ballot races are being accepted as valid. Votes for representatives in Congress, state and local offices are considered valid but votes for President are not. Another indication that the allegations raised are bullshit is they are only concerned with the cotton candy haired, orange skinned, spoiled man child in the White House who cannot accept the fact he lost.