Georgia's 127,000 Missing Votes--Disproportionate Vote Loss in African American Neighborhoods

[diva77]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 8, 2019

CONTACT:
Coalition for Good Governance
Marilyn Marks, Executive Director
704 292 9802, [e-mail]

Atlanta—As previously reported by the Coalition for Good Governance, more than 127,000 votes appear to be missing in November’s election for Lieutenant Governor. Today, the Coalition released a preliminary report revealing the disproportionate loss of votes in heavily African American neighborhood precincts. The findings are a result of the Coalition’s analyses of publicly reported results and demographics of voters in the 2018 mid-term election. The Coalition’s report contains detailed findings and statistical analyses.
The report findings are summarized as follows:

--Approximately 127,000 fewer votes were recorded in the 2018 Lt. Governor’s contest than experts estimate should have been cast.

--Statistical analyses and experts’ reports expose a dramatically increased number of missing votes (undervotes or drop-off in votes compared to the top-of-the-ballot contest) for the Lt. Governor’s contest in primarily African American neighborhood precincts.

--Voting machine defects and misprogramming are the likely culprits responsible for the significant number of missing votes. Some voters reported touchscreen machines that did not properly display the Lt. Governor’s contest, and others reported machine screen malfunction and “vote flipping” when they attempted to vote. [bold type added for emphasis]

--The extreme drop-off in votes in the Lt. Governor’s contest when compared to the Governor’s contest is significantly out of line with historic patterns and does not appear in any other 2018 statewide contest, including those contests that were much further “down ballot” than the Lt. Governor’s race. The drop-off indicates that 63,718 fewer votes were recorded for Lt. Governor than for the Commissioner of Agriculture, the statewide contest with the second-lowest participation rate.

--The extreme pattern of missing Lt. Governor’s contest votes only occurred in votes cast on the touchscreen machines. The larger-than-average number of undervotes did not occur in votes cast on paper ballots. Mail-in ballot voters voted down the ballot in typical historical voting patterns.

--There is no meaningful correlation between new voters and the Lt. Governor undervote, debunking officials’ excuse that newly registered voters were confused about the need to vote separately for Governor and Lt. Governor.

--Forensic examinations of the machine programming must be promptly undertaken to obtain answers, locate the source of the errors, and, if appropriate, hold officials accountable.

--Electronic voting systems must be immediately abandoned and paper ballots adopted so that no future elections are conducted on Georgia’s unauditable machines.

--Governor Kemp, Secretary Raffensperger, and legislative leaders must abandon their plan to adopt a new ballot-marking-device electronic voting system that, like the current system, is unauditable and vulnerable to problems of the type experienced in November’s election.

Marilyn Marks, Executive Director for the Coalition for Good Governance, said, “The findings are deeply disturbing and difficult to accept, but the statistics and evidence show an undeniable pattern of extreme numbers of missing votes, concentrated in precincts in predominately African American neighborhoods. It is imperative that voters, voting rights advocates, and civic leaders demand clear and factual answers. Our pending lawsuits are poised to obtain the technical answers through the discovery process, but the public deserves more immediate answers. Georgia’s voters must also call for an immediate halt to electronic touchscreen voting, including the proposed unauditable touchscreen system that Governor Kemp and Secretary Raffensperger are promoting despite warnings from the nation’s leading experts in voting system security.”

Bruce Brown, Atlanta-based attorney for the Coalition and other plaintiffs in two election security lawsuits added: “It clearly is in the public interest to get to the bottom of this—to figure out what caused the votes to go missing when cast on electronic voting machines but not when the votes were cast on paper ballots. The Secretary of State should be leading the effort to figure this out, but instead is resisting every effort to get to the truth.”

Coalition for Good Governance is a small, volunteer-run, nonpartisan, nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization focused on election transparency and verifiability, currently devoting its resources to addressing Georgia’s failed election system.
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Follow us on Twitter @CoalitionGoodGv

[niyad]

1. colour me soooooo not surprised. kemp was, and remains, a crooked asshole.

[diva77]

2. i agree. Coalition for Good Governance is doing the type of work needed to restore

election integrity. Very difficult work.

[Demovictory9]

3. kick

[FakeNoose]

4. So, I guess this means Stacey Abrams won after all?

Surely they're going to have a run-off election, right? Is anybody holding Kemp accountable for this monstrous fuck-up?

[groundloop]

5. No, this doesn't have anything to do with the Governor's race

This article is pointing out that there were problems with vote counting in the Lt. Governor's race relating to electronic voting machines.

Still, I believe there were other shenanigans which cost her the race. Voting locations were moved at the last minute, there weren't enough voting machines delivered to some precincts, voters were purged from the voting rolls. And of course there was a higher percentage of minority voters affected by these tricks..... all of this must be fixed.

[Miigwech]

6. Of course she did!

[Hortensis]

12. We are Georgia voters, and we believe Stacey must be

the choice of a solid majority, including both those voters whose votes weren't counted and those among the electorate who wanted to vote but were blocked by illicit Republican actions. Election interference was extremely widespread around the state. We were pleased that our district's election was relatively clean, but since it's among the most conservative in the nation, election theft was not needed here. "Relatively" because it was common for many people who'd requested mail-in ballots to not receive them by the last day there was still time to return them.

Stacey, of course, also believes those of us able to vote may have elected her governor. She refused to concede the election, only announced that all legal avenues to challenge had been exhausted.

[SunSeeker]

7. The Georgia 2018 election was stolen by Republicans.

It is hopelessly illegitimate.

[Hortensis]

15. Blatantly in view of the entire planet. The limitations

of the legal system, and its corruption, were used to validate their theft.

Importantly, this is a lesson everyone should take because theft combined with misuse and corruption of our legal system is how they intend to take control of our nation and put an end to rule by will of the people.

[SunSeeker]

16. Yes, Repubs hate that whole "government of, by and for the people" stuff.

Ironic that Lincoln said that and Repubs keep trying to claim him as their own.

[Ferrets are Cool]

8. When they can't win, they CHEAT. Have been doing it for years. nt

[Honeycombe8]

9. This is a nightmare. I don't understand how they know those voters were cast...

or if it's a guess, but if it's true, this is disenfranchisement (again) of African Americans in the country.

We NEED to get Democrats elected there. The Republicans will never fix this, because this is the plan. This was the goal.

Unless something is done on the federal level, this will always be a danger.

[maxrandb]

10. But apparently there was no blackface

When he was in college.

[diva77]

11. There ought to be a ZERO tolerance policy for elections officials who participate in this type of

election fraud occurring in GA (and the rest of the US), for sure. There ought to be zero tolerance for ANY election fraud, anyhow.

[DontBooVote]

13. Is legal action being taken (or already pending) as a result of this finding?

[diva77]

14. here's a case that was unfortunately dismissed by a judge (article from Jan 19, 2019)

Plaintiffs plan to appeal.

https://www.ajc.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/judge-dismisses-case-challenging-georgia-lieutenant-governor-race/JEX9F2aGs60aHTg32O3RyJ/

A Cobb County Superior Court judge on Friday dismissed a case contesting the election of Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan.

Senior Judge Adele Grubbs said while she “respected” the argument there may be some issues with the entire voting system, the plaintiffs did not prove specific problems with the recording of ballots in the lieutenant governor’s race that would alter the outcome of the election.

The plaintiffs in the case said they plan to appeal.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs tried to prove that a drop-off in votes cast in the lieutenant governor’s race indicated the election between Duncan, a Republican, and Democrat Sarah Riggs Amico was caused by malfunctioning voting machines. Duncan won by more than 123,000 votes.

“Your attack is on the whole system, and I respect that there is scientific authority that says the (state’s voting) system is terrible,” Grubbs said. “But what I’m here on is one race — just one race. You haven’t sued the state to get rid of the system.”

The suit, filed in late November by an election integrity advocacy group and three voters, blamed the state’s 16-year-old direct-recording electronic voting system. About 80,000 fewer votes were counted in the lieutenant governor’s race than the average of ballots recorded in 10 statewide contests in the Nov. 6 election.

Bruce Brown, an attorney representing the plaintiffs, said he was frustrated with the outcome because his clients were not allowed to examine the machines used in the November election — something he said is a bad precedent.

“The court did not allow discovery of the underlying programming, yet required us to prove that the programming — which we did not have access to — was malicious or had been misprogrammed,” he said. “So you’re caught in a Catch-22.”

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Visit https://www.coalitionforgoodgovernance.org and click on links which will lead to more news on lawsuits.

[Volaris]

17. I'm so soooooooo shocked to discover that there's gambling going on in this casino.

It's fucking Georgia. And the Court thought this WOULDNT happen....

[diva77]

18. If only this were just happening in GA; it's happening all over the US :(