The Georgia Supreme Court just issued a unanimous decision that says the state can continue to use electronic touchscreen voting machines in elections and rejects the argument that these machines are unconstitutional because they can be fraudulently manipulated. The high court’s ruling was logical, rational and intelligently reasoned — which means we can look forward to hearing more tiresome rants that the justices are now part of the “conspiracy” to steal elections in Georgia.
There was a time when I let myself become involved in conversations with the voting machine critics who show up regularly at State Election Board meetings to urge that the electronic machines be junked. I don’t do that anymore, because I have found that this is a group of people who largely are impervious to such concepts as logic, reasoning, and the lessons of history.
I have also swapped several emails with Garland Favorito, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit that challenged the constitutionality of the electronic machines (interestingly, his aversion to electronic balloting does not extend to the sending of electronic emails). My exchanges with Garland have always been civil and polite, but in each one of them I have asked him a variation of this question: Please cite for me one election — just one — that has been stolen or fraudulently manipulated in Georgia because of the use of electronic touchscreen voting machines. He has never answered that question.
The point I have tried to make to Garland and the others who insist that the state must throw out the electronic machines and return to the days of “reliable” paper ballots is this: Georgia has a long history of elections being stolen through the use of fraudulent paper ballots. How is reverting to that system going to make voting any more safe and reliable than it is today?
One prime example: the legendary 1946 governor’s race when hundreds of dead voters in Telfair County, in the words of the late Ben Fortson, “arose from their graves, marched to the polls in alphabetical order, and cast their write-in votes for Herman Talmadge.” Those write-in votes were cast on paper.
When a Sumter County peanut farmer named Jimmy Carter ran against an incumbent state senator in 1962, also back in the days of paper ballots, the incumbent stole the election from the political newcomer. Carter was able to have those fraudulent results overturned in court (he had a good lawyer, Charlie Kirbo) and was eventually seated in the Legislature.
“No balloting system is perfect,” said today’s ruling written by Justice George Carley. “Traditional paper ballots, as became evident during the 2000 presidential election, are prone to overvotes, undervotes, ‘hanging chads,’ and other mechanical and human errors that may thwart voter intent.”
“The unfortunate reality is that the possibility of electoral fraud can never be completely eliminated, no matter which type of ballot is used,” Carley noted.
When former secretary of state Cathy Cox finalized the purchase of these electronic voting machines several years ago, she also inspired the startup of the persistent group of conspiracy theorists who are convinced these machines subvert the voting process.
Throughout Cox’s last couple of years in office, these conspiracy theorists argued with her at every turn that the touchscreen machines were susceptible to being hacked and would lead to elections being stolen by campaigns that manipulated the vote tabulations.
Cox disagreed with their dire assessments and continued to use the electronic machines statewide. When she was defeated in the 2006 Democratic gubernatorial primary, the conspiracy theorists celebrated her defeat and awaited the entrance of the new secretary of state, Karen Handel, who would surely listen to them and get rid of those cursed electronic machines.
As it turned out, Handel paid even less attention to the conspiracy theorists than did her predecessor. Georgia continued to use the electronic machines in her first cycle as the state’s chief elections officer and they’ll be used again in the 2010 elections.
If electronic voting machines really were being manipulated to steal elections, then logic suggests that recent election results would have turned out differently.
The first statewide election in which the electronic machines were used was in 2002. Cathy Cox, the state’s chief elections officer, was a Democrat. But that was the election when Democratic incumbent Roy Barnes was upset by Republican Sonny Perdue (Barnes’ top strategist, Bobby Kahn, has rejected the contention that electronic machines “stole” the election for Perdue).
In 2006, Cox was still in charge of state elections and was running against Lt. Gov. Mark Taylor for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination. Taylor defeated her in the primary without a runoff.
If Cox was involved in some conspiracy to have herself and other Democrats win elections through voting machine tampering, she obviously didn’t do a very good job of it.
In 2008, Handel, a Republican, had become the state’s chief elections officer. But even with a GOP stalwart in charge of the elections, Republican legislators John Heard, Allen Freeman, and Steve Tumlin were each upset by their Democratic challengers. Democrat Toney Collins won the Republican House seat that was vacated by Bob Mumford. U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss was forced into a high-risk runoff election with Democrat Jim Martin.
If there was really a conspiracy at the highest levels to rig the election results for Republican candidates, then Heard, Freeman and Tumlin would still be in office and Chambliss would never have had to worry about that runoff.
I guess that’s all part of the conspiracy too.
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