On Monday, the Georgia State Election Board (SEB) is set to vote on a rule amendment that would require all county boards of elections to comply with new procedures to enforce current state requirements that the number of ballots, number of votes, and number of voters in election tallies come out equal.
Georgia saw more than 3,000 ballots double-scanned during the 2020 presidential recount in Fulton County. It is unclear how many — if any — of the double scanned ballots were counted twice as votes, since the Georgia secretary of state’s office could not confirm it, according to the Atlanta-Journal Constitution.
Kevin Moncla, who filed a complaint alleging potential violations of Georgia’s election code in Fulton County, tells The Federalist he believes the double-scanned ballots were indeed counted twice since he says they appeared in the cast vote record. A streamlined reconciliation process would catch a repeat of this election malfeasance by identifying more votes tallied than the amount of voters who voted.
But Moncla tells The Federalist it wasn’t just that more than 3,000 ballots were double scanned.
“In the hand count they found approximately 6,000 ballots in four different counties that were missing or hadn’t been counted, and that means that no one is reconciling,” Moncla explained. “It’s not a one-off in Fulton, it’s a pervasive and systemic problem. Reconciliation is like a stool: you need all three legs and if you don’t have them all, then you’re going to fall.” Those “three legs,” he said, are “the number of voters, the number of ballots, and the number of ballots according to the machine.”
Georgia state law currently requires reconciliation, but that process is not uniform across the state. That may all change Aug. 19 with the SEB vote.
Under the proposal, votes would be broken down by category of how the vote was cast, such as absentee, provisional, advance, or in person on Election Day. If a precinct is found to have a discrepancy, the rule would force the board to “investigate the discrepancy and no votes shall be counted from that precinct until the results of the investigation are presented to the Board as required [by state law].” Should a discrepancy still not be resolved, the issue would be referred to the district attorney for further investigation.
A separate proposal would also require that a poll manager and “two witnesses who have been sworn as poll officers” shall each “independently count the total number of ballots removed from the scanner” and then compare their totals.
“When all three poll officers arrive at the same total ballot count independently, they shall each sign a control document containing the polling place, ballot scanner serial number, electronic name, printed name with signature and date and time of the ballot hand count,” the proposal states. If there is a discrepancy, the poll manager is instructed to then investigate the reason for the inconsistency.
Cobb County Republican Chairwoman Salleigh Grubbs described the process to The Federalist as being like “going to the bank and getting a deposit receipt. You just want to be sure that the number of bills you say are there are actually accounted for.”
“These proposals create uniform guidance, and that’s what’s needed,” Grubbs, who also submitted a proposal for reconciliation, explained to The Federalist. “You’ve got the law that says what they have to do, but then you don’t have the rules that say how you have to do it. And a lot of the boards of election need that reference to go back to and again, a lot of this is necessitated because we have a secretary of state that’s not doing his job.”
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger appeared to criticize the rule proposals in a vague statement on Thursday, accusing “activists” of “seeking to impose last-minute changes in election procedures outside of the legislative process.”
The secretary of state condemned “misguided attempts by the State Election Board” that he claimed “will delay election results and undermine chain of custody safeguards.”
Grubbs contends that Raffensperger is “not doing an adequate job of ensuring our election system is secure” or that “voter information is accurate.”
“There’s a fundamental lack of accountability of our secretary of state,” she said. “Those issues filter down to the counties — which is one reason why the SEB must provide oversight.”