Tennessee: Hand-marked paper ballots for elections get new push in Shelby County | Bill Dries/The Daily Memphian

Shelby County Commissioner Reginald Milton says when commissioners discuss a new voting system next week for local elections, he will advocate for hand-marked paper ballots to replace the touch-screen machines used in Shelby County elections. Milton recalls his first bid for elected office ended with a loss by 26 votes. While he didn’t seek to overturn the results in Chancery Court, Milton is among a lot of candidates in close races who want to see some data before they decide if it is worth it to go to court. “That took an entire month to resolve that issue. That was unnecessary,” he said. “It could have been done instantly.” The county has already allocated $2.5 million in funding for a new voting system the election commission hopes to debut this election year. Milton specifically favors printed ballots voters mark by hand that are then run through an optical scanner. The scanner results and the marked ballots, he and other advocates contend, offer two ways of verifying results.

Georgia: Many Troubling, Unanswered Questions about Voting Machinery in Georgia House Runoff | Alternet

The results from Georgia’s sixth district congressional race are odd. Jon Ossoff, the Democratic newcomer who ran against Republican former Secretary of State Karen Handel, won the absentee vote 64% to 36%. That vote was conducted on paper ballots that were mailed in and scanned on optical scanners. Ossoff also won the early voting 51% to 49%. Those results closely mirror recent polls that had him ahead by 1-3 points. In the highest of those polls, he was ahead by 7% with 5% undecided and a 4% margin of error. On Election Day, Handel pulled out a whopping 16 percent lead, for a crushing 58% to 42% division of the day’s votes. That means that all 5% of the undecided voters broke for Handel, the poll was off by its farthest estimate and another 3.5% of Ossoff’s voters switched sides into her camp. All this despite Ossoff’s intensive door-to-door ground offensive that Garland Favorito, who lives in the heart of the sixth district called the "most massive operation” he’s ever seen. Favorito is the founder of VoterGA, a nonpartisan election reform group. He said Handel had signs up, but her canvassing operation didn't approach Ossoff's.

Tennessee: Shelby County Democrats call for federal monitors after glitch | The Commercial Appeal

Shelby County Democratic Party chairman Bryan Carson said Thursday he will ask for federal monitors to oversee the county election after a glitch that he claimed caused problems for early voters during the day. But Election Commission chairman Robert Meyers said the problem should not have impacted votes being cast. Meyers said a construction crew dropped a load of rocks over ground near the early voting location at the Agricenter that was on top of a fiber-optic line. The line was used for precincts to access the registration database when voters check in, he said, and the glitch impacted more than just the Agricenter site. “That’s really kind of a back-of-the-house operation,” Meyers said. And that’s separate from the actual voting machines, which store votes on memory cards.