Bills to increase poll worker pay and allow elections officials to begin opening and processing mail-in ballots 10 days before Election Day were passed out of a Senate committee Thursday. Under S856, early votes may begin to be counted 24 hours after the conclusion of the early voting period, and elections officials can begin opening the inner envelopes and canvassing each mail-in ballot 10 days prior to Election Day. The Senate State Government, Wagering, Tourism & Historic Preservation Committee passed the bill, with only state Sen. Vince Polistina, R-Atlantic, voting against it. “Rather than allow the potential release of information, why not get more machines and people (to count the votes on Election Day),” Polistina said. “Let’s get the right number of machines and people.” Currently, mail-in ballots cannot begin to be counted until Election Day, and early votes cast during the early voting period can only be counted after the polls close. Disclosure of results prior to the close of polls on the day of the election is a crime of the third degree.
Georgia’s race to oversee voting pits an election denier against an election defender | Miles Parks/NPR
Over cheeseburgers, onion rings and fried chicken salads, people shared what they’d heard. Something “crooked” was going on across the country. In California, for instance, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom hadn’t actually won his recall election last year by the 3 million votes that was reported. “They found boxes of ballots months later, all for the other guy,” someone whispered. The TV over the bar at the Flying Machine restaurant in Lawrenceville, Ga., was turned to Fox News, and Republicans gathered to talk about what they’ve been talking about for much of the past year and a half: voter fraud. “How many feel that the 2020 elections were a little sketchy?!” asked DeKalb County GOP Chair Marci McCarthy, to cheers. “Everybody should be raising their hands!” The restaurant event was the 12th and final stop in a three-day “election integrity” tour put on by one of the nation’s preeminent election deniers, Rep. Jody Hice, R-Ga. Hice objected to the 2020 election results at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, just hours after it had been stormed by a violent pro-Trump mob. And now, the former pastor is running to oversee voting in Georgia as the secretary of state.
Full Article: Georgia secretary of state race pits Hice against Raffensperger : NPR