Late Friday, the Georgia State Board of Elections held a scheduled hearing that resulted in a rule requiring precincts in the state to count the number of physical paper ballots at the end of Election Day voting and compare them to polling pad check-ins. .
As discussed in an article last week, The Gateway Pundit pointed out that several counties in Georgia “found” nearly 6,000 votes in a Nov. 16 recount that was originally started as a “risk-limiting audit” but was modified to count all of them. from the ballot.
If only a risk-limiting audit had been carried out, it is likely that the discrepancy would not have been discovered and nearly 6,000 Georgians would not have had their votes counted correctly. On the contrary, if this SEB Rule is implemented in 2020, 6,000 ballot irregularities will be caught immediately.
Huge! Georgia State Board of Elections Passes Rule Requiring Hand Counts of Ballots at the Precinct Level
This common sense rule, however, seems to have caused a reaction from certain organizations that appeared at the meeting in protest, but more importantly, it pushed one particular council that voted against the rule to join Rachel Maddow on MSNBC to announce the “assumption” about. he followed the council members’ “motives” in passing the rules.
Over the weekend, The Gateway Pundit reported on the misinformation spread by Maddow on her MSNBC show, stating that counting the ballots in Georgia will now take “months”.
This patently false statement is a fear tactic to provoke an emotional response from his followers.
In fact, the “hand-count” is only a tally of the total number of ballots, and compares it with the number of voters who entered the area.
In response to X’s misleading post Mark Niesse of the Atlanta-Journal Constitution, Marilyn Marks, one of the plaintiffs in Curling v. Raffensperger trial that took place last January and the executive director of the Coalition for Good Governance, sent to X the following:
Come on guys! Here is a simple 10 minute quick exercise to determine the NUMBER of ballots sent to HQ to ensure they are all counted and not left in the bins and gaps. This is standard procedure in most countries.
How many “delays” will that cause??? https://t.co/UyN92904Y0– Marilyn Marks (@MarilynRMarks1) September 20, 2024
On Friday night, Maddow had SEB member Sara Tindall Ghazal to spread misinformation about the rules.
Ghazal clarified that this is a tally of the number of ballots and not a hand tabulation of the ballots, as Maddow said in an earlier clip The Gateway Pundit shared.
However, Ghazal says:
“We’re only a few weeks away from the election. For the county to try to retrain poll workers and poll managers to hire more workers because the workers who have been out there 14-16 hours a day and not coming in. any way to count thousands of letters sound accurately … it’s impossible to do.”
To be clear, poll workers only need to align the ballot with the polling pad on Election Day.
Unfortunately, the rule requiring the reconciliation of the ballot with the polling pad on the first day of voting did not pass. So Ghazal’s argument about working “14 to 16 hours a day” is wrong. It’s just one day.
But even more troubling is the idea that he is “not in any shape to accurately count thousands of ballots.”
According to Marks, Fulton County has approximately 148 ballots per precinct on Election Day. Nationwide, the average per region is 575. That’s a fraction of the “thousands” Ghazal mentioned on MSNBC.
Councilwoman Janelle King addressed the misinformation Ghazal spread publicly at today’s hearing:
Fireworks erupted at the SEB meeting this morning. Councilor King addressed misinformation from the mainstream media as well as other councilors. This shows why it is so important that we have people willing to take… pic.twitter.com/bgSLofT6CX
– Greasy Boots (@greasyboots) September 23, 2024
The current rules only apply to ballots on Election Day, meaning early voting will not have the same confirmation requirements.
