Georgia: State legislature’s final hours focus on paper ballots | Associated Press

Thursday will mark the last day of Georgia’s 40-day legislative session, and several bills, including proposals that would replace the state’s 16-year-old electronic voting system and give victims of childhood sexual assault more time to sue their abusers, await action by either the House or Senate. The final days of the session are generally chaotic as lawmakers push to vote on as many bills as possible and use legislative maneuvers to hitch stalled proposals to other bills. Here’s a look at some of the latest action from the General Assembly and what is expected in its final days: A proposal that has passed the Senate but awaits a vote in the House would move Georgia from its 16-year-old electronic touchscreen voting system with no paper backup, to either a touchscreen system that prints a paper ballot or paper ballots marked by pencil.

Georgia: Voting groups oppose bill to change Georgia’s voting machines | Atlanta Journal Constitution

Several election integrity organizations are unifying against a bill to change Georgia’s voting system, saying the legislation fails to ensure verifiable election results. The legislation, Senate Bill 403, would replace Georgia’s electronic voting machines with a system that uses paper to some extent. But opponents of the measure say it doesn’t truly commit to paper ballots for audits and recounts.  They’re concerned that the bill allows the state to continue its heavy reliance on voting methods that could be vulnerable to hacking, and it gives county election supervisors the power to refuse to do paper recounts, even in close races. “It’s really important that Georgia gets this right,” said Marian Schneider, the president of the Verified Voting Foundation, a Philadelphia-based organization whose mission is to safeguard elections. ”The voting system that Georgia chooses has to have a voter-marked paper ballot that’s retained by the system and is available for recount and audit.”

Georgia: Democrats outraged over push to limit weekend voting | Associated Press

Georgia Republicans want to limit early voting so that no county can offer it on both on a Saturday and a Sunday. Democrats are outraged; they say the plan is designed to help GOP candidates. “They’re targeting likely Democratic voters to stifle the opportunity to cast a ballot,” said Sen. Lester Jackson, a Savannah Democrat and the chairman of the Georgia Legislative Black Caucus. “Working-class Georgians need opportunities to participate in the governmental process.” Under a bill sponsored by Sen. Matt Brass, R-Newnan, counties would only be able to offer early voting on weekdays and one weekend day. County officials would get to choose whether the polls would be open on one Saturday or one Sunday, but not both.

Georgia: Lawmakers mull paper ballot voting system | Associated Press

As Georgia lawmakers consider scrapping electronic voting machines for a system that uses paper ballots, a razor-thin margin in a U.S. House race over 500 miles away in Western Pennsylvania has highlighted a crucial distinction between the two systems: the presence of an auditable paper trail. The proposal would move Georgia from its 16-year-old electronic touchscreen voting system with no paper backup, to either a touchscreen system that prints a paper ballot or paper ballots marked by pencil. Republican Rep. Ed Setzler of Acworth, one of the bill’s primary backers, said it was needed to ensure that election results could be audited if there were claims or evidence of irregularities and to bolster voter confidence. The measure recently passed the House Governmental Affairs Committee and is expected to quickly see a vote before the full House. … A tight U.S. House race in Western Pennsylvania last week was questioned by GOP officials there who said they were looking into alleged voting irregularities after Democrat Conor Lamb declared victory over Republican Rick Saccone in a longtime GOP stronghold that includes four counties in the Pittsburgh area.

Georgia: Bill cuts down on voting hours despite Democrats’ opposition | Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A bill advancing in the Georgia Legislature would reduce voting hours in the city of Atlanta and limit early voting on Sundays.
The legislation would force Atlanta’s polls to close at 7 p.m. instead of 8 p.m. and allow voting in advance of Election Day on only one Saturday or Sunday. The House Governmental Affairs Committee approved the legislation, Senate Bill 363, on Wednesday. The committee’s five Democrats opposed the bill, while the committee’s majority Republicans all supported it, though a hand count of “yes” votes wasn’t taken. The bill was filed by Republican Sen. Matt Brass after Democratic Sen. Jen Jordan won a special election in December to represent a district that covers parts of Atlanta and Cobb County.  Voting in Cobb County ended at 7 p.m., an hour earlier than in Atlanta.

Georgia: Bill to replace Georgia’s electronic voting machines advances | Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A proposal to replace Georgia’s electronic voting machines passed a subcommittee Tuesday despite concerns that the legislation doesn’t go far enough to safeguard elections. The measure calls for the state to begin using a new voting system with paper ballots in time for the 2020 presidential election. State lawmakers say the state’s all-digital election system, in use since 2002, is outdated and needs to be scrapped after tech experts exposed security vulnerabilities last year in the same type of voting machines as those used in Georgia. … Critics of the voting legislation say the touch-screen machines, which the state tested during a Conyers election in November, are vulnerable to tampering because they use bar codes for tabulation purposes. Voters wouldn’t be able to tell whether the bar codes matched the candidates they chose, which would also be printed on the ballot.

Georgia: Groups threaten to stall Gwinnett County’s elections over voting rights suit | Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Advocacy groups are asking a federal judge to schedule a trial next month to resolve their ongoing voting rights litigation with Gwinnett County — and they’re threatening to try and stall Gwinnett’s 2018 elections if it’s not. An alliance led by the Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials and the Georgia NAACP filed a lawsuit in August 2016 alleging that Gwinnett County’s commission and school board districts were drawn to dilute the influence of minority voters. The subsequent time has been full of legal wrangling by both sides and, earlier this month, Judge Amy Totenberg ordered them to issue a joint statement regarding their positions on a dozen key issues in the case.

Georgia: House advances bill to reduce voting hours in Atlanta | Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Voters in Atlanta would have one less hour to cast their ballots under a bill that cleared a subcommittee Thursday. The legislation, Senate Bill 363, would force the city of Atlanta to close its polls at 7 p.m. like the rest of the state. Currently, Atlanta is allowed to keep precincts open until 8 p.m. under a state law passed in the 1970s. The bill was filed by Republican Sen. Matt Brass after Democratic Sen. Jen Jordan won a special election in December to represent a district that covers parts of Atlanta and Cobb County. Voting in Cobb County ended at 7 p.m.

Georgia: Cybersecurity bill could also hinder legitimate work | Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Until an internet researcher found the personal information of 6.7 million Georgia voters online, it was available for the taking by potential criminals. Because the researcher reported his discovery last March, that election information was locked down within an hour. The FBI looked into the case and concluded he hadn’t broken the law. Now Georgia lawmakers might make that kind of research a crime. A bill advancing through the Georgia General Assembly would crack down on investigations into whether the government or businesses aren’t protecting their data, unless permission is given in advance. The legislation is meant to prevent computer snooping, but it could also stop legitimate internet security efforts. The bill was introduced, in part, as a result of the state’s failure to protect voter records — including voter lists with full Social Security numbers and birth dates — at Kennesaw State University’s Center for Election Systems.

Georgia: Plan to Scrap Vulnerable Voting Machines Moves to the House | The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Georgia lawmakers are preparing to ditch the state’s old and vulnerable electronic voting machines, but they haven’t fully committed to paper ballots that can’t be hacked. A bill to to replace all of Georgia’s 27,000 voting machines in time for the 2020 presidential election cleared the state Senate last week and is now pending in the House. Organizations seeking secure elections say they’re worried that Georgia could end up with an untrustworthy and expensive election system. The legislation has raised some concerns, including the lack of a requirement that manual recounts be conducted with paper ballots and the possibility that bar codes could be printed on the ballots. “Electronics make life easier, but they also can be manipulated,” said Sara Henderson, the executive director of Common Cause Georgia, a government accountability group. “We’re trying to get changes into the bill that will make paper the official ballot of record. “If we don’t have that language in there, we’ll have the same situation as we have now,” she said.

Georgia: Barcodes Stir Anxiety As Georgia Eyes New Voting System | WABE

As Republican and Democratic state legislators hustle to pass a law moving Georgia toward paper ballot voting technology, election integrity advocates said they’re concerned a bill that already cleared the state Senate could lead to a new vulnerability in Georgia’s next voting system, if it becomes law. One way a new system might work is through a touchscreen computer similar to those currently used in Georgia. It would print a paper ballot with a visual representation of a voter’s choices so they themselves can check for accuracy. In some systems, counting the votes means scanning an entire image of the ballot that may include a timestamp and precinct information. In other systems, barcodes or QR codes on a ballot would correspond with the voter’s choices, which can make counting easier and faster for election officials, said Peter Lichtenheld, vice president of operations with Hart Intercivic, one of several election technology companies that hired lobbyists at the statehouse this year.

Georgia: Voter registration will be changed after ACLU complaint | Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Georgia election officials have agreed to change voter registration forms in response to a complaint that they misrepresented ID requirements for first-time voters. The American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia sought the change because the registration form says new voters must provide documentation of their name and address with their mailed applications. But federal election law only requires identification from first-time voters at some point before they cast a ballot, not at the time they register to vote.

Georgia: Senate votes to switch elections to paper ballots | Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The Georgia Senate on Wednesday voted to approve a measure that would move the state from using digital to paper ballots during the state’s elections. The measure, Senate Bill 403, calls for the state to scrap its 16-year-old touch-screen voting system and replace it with a paper-based system. “This looks at replacing voting machines so that every single voter in our state’s vote that’s cast will be preserved,” said state Sen. Bruce Thompson, R-White, the bill’s sponsor. Currently, Georgia’s 27,000 touch screens leave no paper record of how people voted, making it impossible to audit elections for accuracy or to conduct verifiable recounts, lawmakers said. Legislators lately have begun to favor paper ballots because they can’t be hacked. 

Georgia: “Misguided” hacking bill threatens to ice security researchers, say critics | Naked Security

The US state of Georgia is considering anti-hacking legislation that critics fear could criminalize security researchers. The bill, SB 315, was drawn up by state senator Bruce Thompson in January, has been approved by the state’s senate, and is now being considered by its house of representatives. The bill would expand the state’s current computer law to create what it calls the “new” crime of unauthorized computer access. It would include penalties for accessing a system without permission even if no information was taken or damaged. One of the bill’s backers, state Attorney General Chris Carr, said the bill is necessary to close a loophole: namely, the state now can’t prosecute somebody who harmlessly accesses computers without authorization.

Georgia: Kemp faces new voter security questions amid Russia probe | Atlanta Journal-Constitution

As evidence mounts that Russia is again trying to interfere in U.S. votes, Georgia’s top elections official faces new scrutiny of his oversight of the state’s voting system. Secretary of State Brian Kemp, a Republican candidate for governor, tells voters the state’s elections system is secure and that he doesn’t need additional help from Washington to defend against hackers. But he’s also open to a paper-based voting system, which his critics from both parties say is essential to ensuring the state’s touch-screen voting machines can’t be undermined. And he’s come under fire for past lapses that have left confidential voter data vulnerable. For Kemp, who launched a statewide bus tour Monday, the fears about the state’s voting network are misguided. He said in an interview he’s “completely confident” in the integrity of Georgia’s election system, and brushed aside concerns the state isn’t doing enough to protect the ballots.

Georgia: State looks to drop electronic voting machines in favor of paper ballots | Fox News

A unique effort is underway in Georgia to safeguard elections by taking voting machines back to the future. “The most secure elections in the world are conducted with a piece of paper and a pencil,” said Georgia State Rep. Scot Turner. “It allows you to continue into the future to verify the result.” Turner has proposed a bill that would retire Georgia’s electronic touch-screen voting machines and switch to paper ballots that voters would fill out and then be counted by optical scan machines. The technology has been in use for decades to score standardized tests for grade-school students.

Georgia: State To End Controversial Step In Voter Roll Deletions | WABE

Georgia’s Secretary of State’s office will “instruct” local elections officials to automatically update addresses for people who move within the same county as part of a settlement reached in a lawsuit filed by the ACLU of Georgia against Secretary of State Brian Kemp, and the Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections. In the short term, the mutual agreement means the information of 35,000 Georgians will be updated. It will also make voting easier in the future for people who move within the same county, said Sean Young, legal director with the ACLU of Georgia. “If someone’s address isn’t updated they may show up at the wrong polling place,” Young said. “They’re supposed to be given an opportunity at that point to go ahead and vote and have the opportunity to change their address at the polling site. But sometimes what happens is the voter gets frustrated and then they’re turned away. They look for their correct polling place and they may not have enough time to find the correct polling place.”

Georgia: Legislation would replace Georgia electronic voting with paper | Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Elections in Georgia could return to paper ballots. A bill recently introduced in the Georgia General Assembly calls for the state to scrap its 16-year-old touch-screen voting system and replace it with a paper-based system. Paper ballots, used by about 70 percent of the nation, are more secure than electronic machines because they can’t be hacked, said state Rep. Scot Turner, the sponsor of House Bill 680. Currently, Georgia’s 27,000 touch screens leave no paper record of how people voted, making it impossible to audit elections for accuracy or to conduct verifiable recounts.

Georgia: Cagle, Kemp battle over Georgia voting system | The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Two of the most prominent Republicans in the race for governor locked in a war of words Thursday over a proposal that would replace the state’s aging voting system with paper ballots. It was the most public rift yet between Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle and Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp, the two candidates in the governor’s race with statewide victories under their belts. And their feud, which escalated throughout the day, signaled the debate over the 16-year-old touch-screen voting network could play a larger role in the race to succeed Gov. Nathan Deal. It started when Cagle announced he would back a measure to scrap the state’s touch-screen voting machines and largely replace them with a paper-based system. He told WABE that a paper-ballot trail ensures “no games” could be played with votes.

Georgia: Paper Ballot Push Gets Boost With Support Of Georgia Lt. Governor | WABE

The effort to retire Georgia’s aging, electronic voting machines got a boost Wednesday from Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, leader of the state Senate, who said the legislature must act “in haste” to setup a new paper ballot system. “I think it is important that we have a paper ballot trail that ensures that accuracy is there, and that there are no games that potentially could be played,” Cagle, a Republican candidate for governor, said in an interview with WABE. Georgia is one of just a few states that exclusively use voting machines without a paper trail. Cybersecurity experts agree it exposes the system to potential doubt, hacks and glitches. “I’m super excited to have Lt. Gov. Cagle on board,” said Republican Rep. Scot Turner, the lead sponsor of a bi-partisan bill in the House that would require the state move to a paper ballot system, which could be audited.

Georgia: Kemp: University’s blunder led to elections server issue | Gainesville Times

Secretary of State Brian Kemp said Saturday the elections server mishap at Kennesaw State University was caused by bad management at the school. Kemp, a candidate for governor making a campaign stop in Gainesville to talk to the Hall County Republican Party, said the decision to wipe a server critical to an elections-related lawsuit against the secretary of state and his office was made by the school and was “really incompetence on their part that we had no knowledge of.” Election reform advocates filed a suit against the secretary of state last July 3. Four days later, server managers at the Center for Elections Systems at Kennesaw State University wiped the server holding information critical to the lawsuit, which was filed over the state’s aging elections equipment.

Georgia: How redrawing districts has kept Georgia incumbents in power | Atlanta Magazine

After Joyce Chandler and Brian Strickland, two white Republican state representatives in metro Atlanta, barely won re-election against Democrats in 2014, their colleagues in the General Assembly didn’t take it as a sign to step up minority outreach. Instead, they pulled out their maps. When the state Legislature convened the following January, as part of a “midcycle” redrawing of more than 15 House seats, lawmakers decided to swap out heavily black and Latino areas in Chandler and Strickland’s suburban districts with nearby precincts that leaned Republican. Two years later, Strickland again eked out a victory. The creative mapmaking appeared to be yet another political power play, one practiced just as deftly by Democrats during their more than 150 years of control over the General Assembly. But according to a federal lawsuit filed last October, the 2015 effort was an “assault on voting rights” that amounted to racial gerrymandering—an unconstitutional act.

Georgia: Norwood concedes defeat, won’t challenge Atlanta mayoral election results in court | Marietta Daily Journal

One day before the deadline to challenge in court the results of the Dec. 5 Atlanta mayoral nonpartisan general runoff election, Mary Norwood has conceded defeat against Keisha Lance Bottoms. In an email sent to her supporters and the media Dec. 20, Norwood said she decided not to challenge the results in Fulton County Superior Court Dec. 21. She had until that day to do so because the Dec. 16 certification of the recount in the election yielded a small change in the results, where Norwood lost by about 820 votes or 49.6 percent.

Georgia: Norwood may challenge Atlanta mayor’s race results in court after recount yields loss | Marietta Daily Journal

The Dec. 14 recount in the Dec. 5 nonpartisan Atlanta mayoral general runoff election produced the same result as the certified totals did, with Keisha Lance Bottoms nipping Mary Norwood by 832 votes. But Norwood is considering challenging the election results in court after the Dec. 14 recount conducted by DeKalb and Fulton counties did not include officials hand-counting the absentee and provisional ballots. The two counties certified the results Dec. 11, and with it, Bottoms’ margin of victory increased from 759 votes to 832. However, the percentages stayed the same, with Bottoms getting 50.4 percent and Norwood 49.6 percent, meaning Norwood was still within a percentage point and eligible for a recount, which she had already requested.

Georgia: FBI mum on Georgia’s wiped election server | GCN

Georgia is currently facing a lawsuit in federal court by voters and advocacy groups that claim a June 2017 special election may have been compromised because of insufficient security practices by Georgia officials and the organization that oversaw election infrastructure, Kennesaw State University (KSU). The special election was to fill the seat vacated by Tom Price, who resigned from the House of Representatives to serve as Secretary of Health and Human Services before resigning from that post. The plaintiffs in the lawsuit allege that Georgia’s voter registration data was hosted on the same server as the vote tabulation databases, the software used to program ballots and the passwords for both voting machines and election supervisors. Further, all of this data was connected to a public-facing website that was accessible for at least 10 months to anyone with an internet connection and technical expertise.

Georgia: Is the FBI investigating Georgia’s wiped election server? | FCW

At a Dec. 7 House hearing, FBI Director Christopher Wray declined to answer questions about whether the bureau retained data on a Georgia election server before it was wiped clean by state election officials, then declined to answer whether the FBI was investigating the matter. Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) raised the specter of an investigation into a server containing voting data from a recent special election to fill the seat vacated by Tom Price, who resigned from the House of Representatives to serve as Secretary of Health and Human Services before resigning from that post. … Joe Kiniry, CEO of Free and Fair, a company that tests election systems for cybersecurity vulnerabilities, praised Johnson’s line of questioning. He said the combination of Georgia’s reliance on paperless voting, outsourcing of election operations to a third-party and “really bad security processes” by KSU created a perfect storm that inevitably led to lawsuits but also opportunity. “I believe that the positive outcome of all of this will be that, eventually, Georgia will replace its election system with machines that have paper ballot records, Kiniry said.

Georgia: A Look At How Election Recounts Work In Atlanta | WABE

City Council member, and possible mayor elect, Keisha Lance Bottoms seemed to have won the most votes in Atlanta’s mayoral runoff Tuesday, although official results have not been certified. Bottoms beat Mary Norwood by almost 800 votes, and her campaign has already declared victory. Certified results may not be available until the end of the week, but Norwood said she is committed to requesting a recount if the margin turns out to be 1 percent or less. “We’re going to know that every single vote that has been cast is exactly reported out the way that it should be and will be,” Norwood told supporters Tuesday night.

Georgia: Election Tech Companies Show Potential Replacements For Voting Machines | WABE

Some of the nation’s top election technology companies explained to state lawmakers Thursday how they might replace Georgia’s 15-year-old electronic voting machines, which have been phased out in many states around the country. … Georgia is one of five states where voting machines currently have no paper trail, and cybersecurity experts agree that exposes the system to potential doubt, hacks and glitches. “The bottom line is you want to have that fail-safe, so that the system can be checked with an audit and, if necessary, be recounted with a physical record, and that’s provided with a paper ballot,” said Susan Greenhalgh with Verified Voting, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that advocates for accuracy, transparency and verifiability of elections. She presented to the committee Thursday.

Georgia: Lawmakers turn timely attention to accuracy of Georgia’s voter tech | Columbus Ledger-Enquirer

A lawsuit that calls into question the accuracy and integrity of past elections is working its way through the system. In the meantime, a bipartisan group of Georgia lawmakers is considering changes that might make such issues moot with regard to future ones. For the last 15 years, Georgia has used touch-screen voting machines, most of which do not provide hard-copy records of vote counts. (The machines used in Muscogee County, as most local voters are aware, provide printed as well as electronic records of vote totals.) One of the advisers at the Thursday committee hearing was Susan Greenhalgh of Verified Voting, an advisory group founded by computer scientists which AP identified as “a non-partisan, non-profit organization that pushes for measures to make elections accurate, transparent and verifiable.” (Greenhalgh is not affiliated with any of the for-profit voter tech companies also represented at the committee meeting.)