Georgia: State Election Board Investigating Athens-Clarke’s Decision To Use Hand-Marked Paper Ballots | Stephen Fowler/Georgia Public Broadcasting

The Georgia State Election Board is holding an emergency hearing in Athens next week to determine whether Athens-Clarke County is violating several state laws by not conducting elections on the state’s new $104 million voting system. According to a notice sent to the county board of elections, Athens-Clarke officials should be prepared to present evidence explaining why it voted 3-2 to determine that it would be “impossible and impracticable” to use the ballot-marking devices. Athens-Clarke officials have moved to paper ballots instead. The secretary of state’s office says it is investigation whether there are violations of at least six different state laws and rules regarding elections, including OCGA §§ 21-2-300, 21-2-265, 21-2-266, 21-2-267 and State Election Board Rules 183-1-12-.01 and 183-1-14-.02. One of the laws mentioned mandates that every county use the same voting system, which Athens-Clarke is not following after the board cited a different state law that says an election may be conducted by hand-marked paper ballot if the use of the machines “is impossible or impracticable.”

Georgia: Clarke County says no to Georgia’s new voting machines | Doug Richards/11alive.com

The Athens-Clarke County Board of Elections voted Tuesday night to reject the state’s new voting machine system. The board voted 3-2 to use hand-marked paper ballots instead for the duration of the presidential preference primary. Georgia rolled out its new computerized ballot-marking devices for the first time statewide when early voting in the primary began Monday.  Voters in Clarke County used them Monday and Tuesday. But the board “found it impracticable to … protect absolute ballot secrecy while allowing sufficient monitoring” of the computerized voting system in Athens’ early voting site, according to a statement issued by elections board chairman Jesse Evans. 11Alive News heard similar complaints during a visit to a south Georgia special election in February.  Voters said the large, bright and upright computer touchpads were visible to other people and poll workers inside precincts. Election officials told us the devices were difficult to position inside polling places in such a way that also assured that poll workers could monitor voter activity according to state law. That’s required in order to deter tampering with the machines.

Georgia: Election officials approve computer recounts of paper ballots | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The State Election Board voted unanimously Friday to conduct recounts of Georgia’s new paper ballots with scanning machines instead of people. The board approved an elections rule that requires recounts to rely on bar codes, despite opposition from protesters who lined the walls of the meeting room. The protesters held signs calling for paper ballots filled out by hand instead of Georgia’s new hybrid voting system, which combines touchscreens and printed-out paper ballots. The board’s decision means that until statewide audits of election results begin in November, the readable text on ballots won’t be counted. Votes will be tabulated based on QR codes printed on paper ballots. Election integrity advocacy groups had argued that recounts by hand were necessary to ensure accuracy of vote counts. A hand count would check whether the printed text that voters see matches the bar codes. But election officials said computer scans of bar codes are more accurate than hand counts, and audits will help catch errors.

Illinois: Election officials are touting sleek new voting machines for the Illinois primary. With early voting underway, are they more secure than old-fashioned paper ballots? | Elyssa Cherney/Chicago Tribune

When Rudy Altergott dropped by an early voting location in Chicago, he encountered technology he hadn’t seen before: a touch-screen device that allowed him to make his selections for the presidential primary with a tap of the finger. The machine printed a receipt that included a QR code — a type of bar code that contains a digital summary of Altergott’s ballot — and a written list of the candidates he chose, including the races he left blank. After he reviewed the paper slip, he fed it into a scanner to store the results. “I thought it was a little bit more user-friendly,” said Altergott, 29, who lives in the Gold Coast neighborhood. “I felt more comfortable with it, and I felt like it was easier to use and more pragmatic.” As election authorities in Chicago and Cook County unveil the new touch screens ahead of the March 17 primary election, polling locations are becoming more high-tech than ever before. The costly equipment was rolled out to combat the risk of election interference and to make voting more accessible for those who have difficulty filling out a ballot by hand.

Georgia: Judge rules ballot secrecy can be protected on Georgia voting screens | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A South Georgia judge ruled Wednesday that elections can move forward on Georgia’s new voting computers, deciding against plaintiffs who said the large touchscreens failed to keep ballots secret. The ruling clears the way for voters to cast their ballots on the touchscreen-and-printer voting system when early voting for the presidential primary begins Monday.Sumter County Superior Court Chief Judge R. Rucker Smith denied an emergency motion to require paper ballots filled out by hand instead of by computer.Smith’s decision is a victory for election officials who argued that voter privacy can be protected by turning touchscreens around so that they face precinct walls instead of voters waiting in line.“You can protect the right of the secret ballot while using the ballot marking devices,” said Bryan Tyson, an attorney for the Sumter County elections board. “There’s no delay with the system. The judge got it right.” The plaintiffs in the lawsuit, led by the Coalition for Good Governance, said election officials must find a way to obey the Georgia Constitution’s requirement for a secret ballot.

Georgia: Lawsuit filed over voter privacy on touchscreens | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A lawsuit filed Monday alleges that Georgia’s new voting computers fail to protect voters’ right to a secret ballot, exposing their choices on brightly lit screens. The lawsuit asks a Sumter County judge to require paper ballots filled out by hand instead of the 21.5-inch touchscreens during next week’s runoff election for a state Senate seat. Georgia election officials said the lawsuit is frivolous and that concerns about voter privacy can be addressed by repositioning touchscreens so they face walls instead of voters. The complaint opens a new front in the ongoing legal fight over Georgia’s $104 million voting system, which combines touchscreens, printers and ballot scanners. Plaintiffs in the lawsuit say only hand-marked paper ballots can protect election security and voter secrecy.

National: Reliability of pricey new ballot marking devices questioned | Frank Bajak/Associated Press

In the rush to replace insecure, unreliable electronic voting machines after Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential race, state and local officials have scrambled to acquire more trustworthy equipment for this year’s election, when U.S. intelligence agencies fear even worse problems. But instead of choosing simple, hand-marked paper ballots that are most resistant to tampering because paper cannot be hacked, many are opting for pricier technology that computer security experts consider almost as risky as earlier discredited electronic systems. Called ballot-marking devices, the machines have touchscreens for registering voter choice. Unlike touchscreen-only machines, they print out paper records that are scanned by optical readers. South Carolina voters will use them in Saturday’s primary. The most pricey solution available, they are at least twice as expensive as the hand-marked paper ballot option. They have been vigorously promoted by the three voting equipment vendors that control 88 percent of the U.S. market.

Illinois: Citizen Group Questions QR Codes for Voting Audits | Mary Schuermann Kuhlman/Public News Service

Early voting for the March 17 primary is now under way for some Illinoisans, but a citizens group contends voters should wait until Election Day to cast a ballot. Chicago Board of Elections’ new Loop Super Site opened on Wednesday, and features new touch screen voting machines and ballot scanners. Dr. Lora Chamberlain is on the board of the group Clean Count Cook County, which maintains the ballot marking devices have significant flaws. “They print a QR code on the ballot and that’s what’s counted,” she explains. “Not the choices written out, but the QR code. “And there’s no smart app, there’s no machine, it’s proprietary. So the voters can never actually know what’s being counted off their ballot.” The machines print a paper record of the voter’s selections, but Chamberlain notes it doesn’t show races the voter might have missed on the ballot.

Illinois: Chicago gets new ‘giant iPad’-style electronic voting machines | Ella Lee/Chicago Sun-Times

New electronic voting machines were rolled out in Chicago this week — just in time for early voting for next month’s primary elections. The machines are touch-screen, like a “giant iPad” and capture an electronic scan of the voter’s ballot before printing, according to Jim Allen, Chicago Board of Election spokesman. “Even if those paper ballots were to be damaged, lost, destroyed or tampered with, you’d not only have the paper, but also the scanned images of all the ballots cast,” Allen said of the technological capabilities of the machines. There will be roughly 4500 new electronic machines in city-based precincts on March 17. Early voters started using the machines Wednesday at the Loop Super Site, at 191 N. Clark St. And when early voting expands to the rest of the precincts, the machines will be available at those locations as well. In addition to hiring cybersecurity expert and working closely with the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI, the $22 million upgrade is another effort by the election board to improve security since Russian hackers tapped Illinois’ voter registration system in 2016.

Georgia: Election Security Scandals in Georgia Heighten 2020 Concerns | Lucas Ropek/Government Technology

In 2016, a vulnerability was discovered in Georgia’s election system that exposed the information of some 6.7 million voters and would’ve given a hacker the ability to manipulate or delete any information within voting machines across the state, according to people familiar with the discovery. While the state has since taken steps to patch the holes, activists are still concerned that the state’s subpar election security practices will endanger the results of the 2020 presidential race. Marilyn Marks, executive director of the advocacy group Coalition for Good Governance, said that while Georgia has corrected some mistakes, it still hasn’t addressed its fundamental weaknesses. The group, which is currently engaged in one of several election-related lawsuits against the state, released a statement this week alleging that the state’s presidential primary was “at risk of failure.” With a highly contentious election looming and heightened concerns about foreign interference, the question remains: has Georgia done what it takes to protect voters and the democratic process?  

Georgia: The power to vote – literally – carries a cost in Georgia | Jessica Waters/Connect

For Stephens County, that cost just increased by $30,500, as county commissioners, at the Feb. 11 regular meeting, unanimously approved the expenditure in order to rewire the Stephens County Senior Center – the county’s sole polling location – so that it is able to handle the electrical draw of the state-mandated new voting machinery. “We have to rewire the Senior Center to handle the amps needed by the new voting equipment. This is a problem all over the State of Georgia, I know of another county that had to spend $68,000 on rewiring. Everyone is having the same problem, and we’ve been jumping through hoops to resolve it,” County Administrator Phyllis Ayers told ConnectLocal.News Tuesday afternoon, Feb. 11. A part of the reason the new voting system has a higher electrical draw than the old system is that there are now several components, instead of the single-machine system previously in use. “You’ve got more machines that need to be plugged in. You’ve got your voting machines, the printers, the scanners, and you’ve got the cyber-power battery packs,” Ayers said. “If my Buildings and Grounds Director had not been here, unloading the equipment, and could see what the amps were – and he was calculating it up in his head as he was going by and he come down here and said ‘where’s the power coming from?’” The $30,500 bid to complete the rewiring of the Senior Center, submitted by local electrical contractor Henry Hayes, will be paid out of contingency funds, along with funding for pouring a concrete pad to hold the generator used to power the equipment and a few other minor related expenditures. “There is a grant where the state will consider reimbursing you back those expenses,” she said. “So we’re trying to keep up with that, and will apply for the grant.”

Louisiana: How Louisiana ended up this year’s election security outlier | David Hawkings/The Fulcrum

The moment of truth for voting system reliability remains nearly nine months off, but already Louisiana has earned itself a troublesome and unique footnote in the story of the 2020 presidential election. It will surely be the only state running totally afoul of the new world of balloting best practices, which says creating and keeping a paper record is the only way to assure every vote is counted accurately (and recounted if need be) and properly reflects the will of the voter. There won’t be a single sheet of paper involved in tabulating the results in Louisiana on Election Day — unlike any of the other 49 states, according to a comprehensive study by Verified Voting, a nonpartisan group that promotes the integrity of elections. All 3,934 polling places will use entirely electronic voting machines that are at least 15 years old, and which do not generate printouts of anything as a fail-safe if something goes wrong.

Editorials: Proposed Georgia vote recount rule baffles | Savannah Morning News

Voting integrity is worth $120 million to Georgia taxpayers but seemingly much less to state election officials. Georgians just made a huge investment in our elections with the purchase and implementation of a new election system. The most valuable improvement, without question, is the ability to verify results by hand recount using printed ballot backups. The State Election Board is threatening to turn the entire overhaul into a nine-figure waste of money. Chaired by Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, himself a supposed champion of the “physical recount,” the State Election Board is considering a rule that would leave the counting to the computer. In the event of a recount, the backup ballots would be run through the counting machine a second time rather than be physically reviewed and counted by local election officials. The move is preposterous on several levels. Let’s focus on the most obvious. Coming off a 2018 midterm election where voting integrity was the dominant theme, Raffensperger and company are stoking the simmering doubts of the electorate. To call this proposed rule tone deaf is to insult all those who can’t carry a tune.

Louisiana: Amid election fears, Louisiana is one of the last states to use aging Sequoia Advantage machines in 2020 | Sam Karlin/The Advocate

When voters in Louisiana go to the polls during the 2020 presidential election, they will cast their ballots on aging electronic voting machines that the nation has largely abandoned over concerns that they have no paper record that could serve as a fail-safe if something goes wrong. The state is moving toward getting new machines that will provide a paper record of votes, and Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin, the state’s chief elections official, had aimed to have them ready for the 2020 elections. But the contract with a private vendor selected by Ardoin’s office was cancelled after a challenge to the bid process, stalling delivery of the new machines. Election security has taken on newfound importance in recent years, following Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. And in Louisiana, a string of cyber attacks against state and local governments that crippled public-facing departments and cost millions of dollars has shone a light on cybersecurity more broadly. Officials, including Ardoin, say they are more prepared to run secure elections in 2020 than ever before, following election interference in 2016 that caught many off guard and prompted reviews among federal and state policymakers. Still, Louisiana’s aging machines invite a greater risk of malfunction than newer equipment that features a paper backup, experts say. And while Ardoin insists there is no risk of hacking because the machines are not connected to the internet and aren’t programmed with computers that are connected to the internet, it is impossible to eliminate the risk of malware entirely, especially if the computers used to program the machines were inadvertently connected to the internet.

Illinois: From arrows to ovals and ‘giant iPads,’ voters in Chicago and Cook County will see new voting machines at the polls | Dan Petrella/Chicago Tribune

Voters in Chicago and the rest of Cook County will see brand-new voting machines when they head to the polls for the March 17 primary elections. All Chicago polling places will be equipped with new voting machines for paper ballots and each will have at least one new touch-screen voting machine, Chicago Board of Election spokesman James Allen said Monday. The most noticeable change will be that voters will fill in an oval rather than connecting to sides of an arrow when filling out a paper ballot, Allen said. The new touch-screen voting machines, which will resemble “giant iPads,” will print out a paper ballot, which voters will then feed into a scanner, much like they do with handwritten ballots. The city elections board is spending $21 million on the machines, with nearly $19 million coming from the city. The City Council approved a measure Jan. 15 that moves $18.7 million from city’s streetlight replacement program to pay for the new equipment. The city and the local election authority are paying for the new equipment because “everybody’s grown weary of waiting” for new federal funding for election equipment, Allen said. “Numerous jurisdictions around the state are just turning to their local pocketbooks,” he said. Fifty-five early voting sites across the city open March 2 and will all be equipped with the new touch-screen machines, Allen said.

Georgia: Fearing long lines, Georgia election officials reject voting proposal | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Georgia’s election board rejected a proposal Wednesday that could have resulted in long lines of voters, instead introducing a plan to require more voting machines during this year’s high-turnout presidential election. Still, the State Election Board’s proposed rules won’t provide as many voting machines as mandated by a state law passed last year, which called for one voting booth for every 250 voters in each precinct. Election officials said they will likely try to change that law during this year’s legislative session. With a new voting system being rolled out during the March 24 presidential primary, the State Election Board approved rules for the state’s voting machines and proposed several other changes dealing with absentee ballot rejections, provisional ballots, paper ballot backups and accessibility options for people with disabilities. The board’s most consequential decision determined how many voting machines are available in each precinct on Election Day.

Illinois: Mayor Lori Lightfoot wants to spend nearly $19 million on new Chicago touchscreen voting machines before March primary election | John Byrne/Chicago Tribune

Chicago voters are poised to see updated voting machines that election officials said will provide more security in the March primary election, thanks to nearly $19 million Mayor Lori Lightfoot wants to move from the city’s streetlight replacement program to pay for the new equipment. Under the spending plan aldermen advanced Monday, the bond money will be transferred to the Chicago Board of Elections to buy new touchscreen voting machines that will generate a paper ballot that voters will feed into ballot readers when they’re done voting. The city has borrowed money for the “smart streetlight” program that Mayor Rahm Emanuel championed through his public-private Infrastructure Trust as a way to save energy costs and speed the replacement of broken lights.

National: Voting vendors, security pros still far apart on protecting 2020 election | Joseph Marks/The Washington Post

Voting machine companies and cybersecurity advocates are still miles apart on what it will take to secure 2020 against Russian hackers. During a nearly three-hour congressional hearing yesterday, security advocates sounded alarm bells about possible election hacks, warning machines in use today can be easily compromised. Companies, meanwhile, mostly defended the status quo. At one point, the chief executive of Hart InterCivic, one of three major companies that control more than 80 percent of the voting machine market, even defended selling paperless voting machines that can’t be audited and that top security experts and the Department of Homeland Security have warned are far too vulnerable in an era when elections are being targeted by sophisticated Russian hackers. “We actually believe our [machines] are secure,” said Hart CEO Julie Mathis, describing a number of internal defensive measures and security reviews they passed – primarily before 2016. The divisions highlighted how, despite three years of surging congressional attention to election security since Russia’s 2016 hacking efforts, there has been almost no government oversight of voting machine makers themselves. … Mathis’s comments were panned by security advocates. “It’s very simple. No matter how secure that device is, there’s no way to know whether the choice that’s recorded matches what the voter intended. It’s rightly called a black box,” Edward Perez, a former Hart executive who’s now global director of technology development at OSET Institute, a nonprofit election technology organization, said in an interview. 

National: Voting machine makers face questions from House lawmakers — but more remain | Ben Popken/NBC

For decades, the companies that dominated the U.S. voting machine industry operated in relative anonymity. Now, lawmakers want answers and transparency. The CEOs of the three companies that make more than 80 percent of the country’s voting machines testified before Congress Thursday for the first time, marking a new and bipartisan effort to ensure the security of the 2020 election. The three companies, Election Systems & Software (ES&S), Dominion Voting Systems and Hart InterCivic, are almost entirely unregulated. But in recent years, policymakers and election advocates have begun to question who owns the companies, how they make their machines and whether they could be susceptible to remote hacking. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., chair of the congressional subcommittee that oversees federal elections, said in her opening remarks that they need more information from the companies. “Despite their outsized role in the mechanics of our democracy, some have accused these companies with obfuscating, and in some cases misleading election administrators and the American public,” said. “There is much work to do, and much for Congress to learn about this industry.”

National: Voting equipment companies throw weight behind enhanced disclosures | Maggie Miller/The Hill

The CEOs of the three largest U.S. voting equipment companies on Thursday supported more disclosure requirements, marking a major step for an industry that has come under close scrutiny in recent years due to election security concerns. The leaders of Election Systems and Software (ES&S), Dominion Voting Systems and Hart InterCivic testified before the House Administration Committee during a House hearing, marking the first time leaders from the three major voting equipment manufacturers testified together before Congress. Committee Chairwoman Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) kicked off the hearing by asking whether the CEOs of these companies, which are estimated to control at least 80 percent of the market for voting equipment in the U.S., would support legislation mandating more disclosures.  Specifically, Lofgren asked if they would support requirements to disclose company cybersecurity practices, cyberattacks experienced by the companies, background checks done on employees, foreign investments in the companies, as well as information on the supply chain involved in building the voting equipment. Tom Burt, the president and CEO of ES&S, which has the largest individual share of the voting equipment market, answered that he “would support a requirement for all five of those requirements.” Julie Mathis, the CEO and president of Hart InterCivic, and John Poulos, the CEO and president of Dominion, both also agreed with Lofgren’s listed disclosure requirements.

Georgia: Few voters check printed ballots like those in Georgia, study shows | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Most voters fail to verify the accuracy of paper ballots printed by touchscreens like those being rolled out in Georgia this year, according to a new study. Unless voters review their choices, potential hacking of election results could go undetected, said the University of Michigan study published Wednesday. Just 7% of voters detected errors on computer-printed paper ballots, the study found. The number of voters who reported ballot errors increased to 16% when they were warned by poll workers that the paper ballot was the official record of their vote. A pending Georgia elections rule requires poll workers to give verbal instructions to voters to review their ballots before scanning them. Signs will also be posted in voting locations reminding voters to verify their ballot choices. The new voting system with touchscreens and printed ballots is scheduled to be used by all Georgia voters for the March 24 presidential primary. The system will replace the state’s 18-year-old electronic voting machines, which didn’t produce paper ballots.

National: Voting machine vendors to testify on election security | Maggie Miller/The Hill

The CEOs of the three biggest U.S. voting equipment manufacturers will testify before the House Administration Committee on Thursday, marking the first election security hearing of 2020. The hearing, which is to be focused on the status of election security, will represent the first time that top executives from the three companies have testified together before Congress. The presidents and CEOs of Dominion Voting Systems, Hart InterCivic and Election Systems and Software (ES&S) are all scheduled to appear. These three companies are estimated to control more  90 percent of the voting equipment market in the U.S., according to a report put out by the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton Public Policy Initiative. All three have come under scrutiny from Washington in the wake of Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential race. The Senate Intelligence Committee in volume one of its investigation into Russia’s actions expressed concerns for the security of voting machines. It voiced particular concerns with “direct-recording electronic” machines, which do not print out a paper copy of a voter’s vote.

Georgia: State confident in timeline for delivery of new voting equipment | Tyler Estep/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Cellophane-wrapped pallet by cellophane-wrapped pallet, workers rolled some 2,800 new voting machines into the DeKalb County elections warehouse on Monday. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger described it as the largest delivery to-date for the new voting system — and said he’s confident every community in Georgia will be fully equipped and fully prepared for March’s presidential primary. “We’ll have every county at 100 percent capacity before the end of the first week in February,” Raffensperger said. As recently as last month, officials had put the target date at the end of January. The new system, run on equipment provided by Dominion Voting Systems through a $107 million state contract awarded this summer, will replace Georgia’s 18-year-old electronic machines with a combination of touchscreens, printed ballots and scanners. Counties across the state must make the switch for the March 24 primary, which involves three weeks of early voting.

Georgia: State Ramps Up New Voting Machine Delivery As Election Deadline Looms | Stephen Fowler/Georgia Public Broadcasting

Standing at the edge of a DeKalb County loading dock, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger joined several reporters and elections staff as a nondescript white truck slowly backed up to unload its cargo. The truck was loaded with battery backups that will help power 2,839 ballot-marking devices used by DeKalb voters in future elections. It was the first of many shipments arriving that day. While the holiday season has made coordinating deliveries to local officials tricky, Raffensperger said that more than 25,000 of the 33,100 BMDs are tested and in the state’s control and 32 of Georgia’s 159 counties have received nearly all of their new voting machines and accessories. Cobb County (2,039 machines) is waiting on final pieces of equipment, DeKalb County (2,839) is currently being delivered and in the next few weeks Fulton (3,058) and Gwinnett counties (2,257) will receive most of their equipment. “So, that represents 34% of all the voting equipment for the entire state of Georgia,” Raffensperger said.

Georgia: State Elections Board seeks public comment on paper ballot rules | Albany Herald

The State Elections Board voted Tuesday to post for public comment updated rules for county officials to run elections on Georgia’s new paper ballot system, another key step in the implementation of the largest voting system rollout in U.S. history. An important aspect of the rules are procedures for maintaining the integrity of the touchscreen ballot-marking devises, known as BMDs. The rules require county poll managers to test each BMD before every election to ensure that voters’ selections will be accurately printed on the ballots. “These rules, and the verification procedures they contemplate, are critical in assuring voters that their choices will be recorded faithfully and counted accurately,” Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, chairman of the five-member State Elections Board, said in a news release. The proposed rules reflect best practices recommended by election-security experts and House Bill 316 passed earlier this year by the Georgia General Assembly. They also incorporate comments from the American Civil Liberties Union, the Democratic Party of Georgia, the Brennan Center for Justice, and a working group of local election officials. The proposed rules are posted at here.

Georgia: State Buying More New Voting Machines For Counties Ahead Of 2020 Rollout | Stephen Fowler/Georgia Public Broadcasting

Nearly half of Georgia’s 159 counties are getting more voting machines than allotted in the original request for proposals, according to the latest numbers from the secretary of state’s office. Georgia has purchased 33,100 Dominion ballot-marking devices as part of the largest single implementation of a new voting system in U.S. history, with 31,826 of them slated to be delivered to counties ahead of the March 24 presidential preference primary. Gabriel Sterling, chief operating officer and project manager with the secretary of state’s office, said that each county will receive either the number of machines requested in the RFP or one machine for every 225 active registered voters in the county, whichever is larger. That ranges from 10 machines sent to Taliaferro, Quitman and Webster counties to more than 3,300 in Fulton. No county will have fewer BMDs than they had direct-recording electronic machines in the 2018 election. Sterling said the purchase of 3,000 additional machines as well as high-capacity scanners for every county and mobile ballot printers are the result of cost savings and negotiations with Dominion over the past few months.

SPREADSHEET: Voting Machines By County

Georgia: Groups Claim New Voting Machines Will Cost Counties Millions Extra, Georgia Secretary Of State’s Office Disagrees | Emil Moffat and Emma Hurt/WABE

A new study warns that Georgia’s new voting system could cost counties more than $80 million over the next ten years. The study was compiled by three groups: Fair Fight Action, a group founded by former Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams; The National Election Defense Coalition, which declares itself bi-partisan; and Freedom Works, a conservative group. That cost estimate, for some counties, includes the purchase of additional voting machines for this coming election to meet requirements under a new law that passed this year. The law, House Bill 316, mandates that each precinct has one voting station for every 250 registered voters. The estimates for the additional machines gathered in the study varied from hundreds, such as in Fulton County, to no additional machines, such as in DeKalb County. The state of Georgia agreed to a $107 million contract with Dominion Voting Systems in July. The groups who compiled the election cost study argue that the terms of the contract don’t cover warranty and licensing costs in the future, as well as printing costs like paper and toner, leaving the counties to foot the bill.

Georgia: Groups warn of hidden costs of new Georgia voting machines | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Georgia taxpayers could be saddled with tens of millions of dollars in hidden costs for new voting machines, according to calculations released Wednesday by three groups critical of the state’s election spending. The groups, which span the political spectrum, said a $104 million contract for a new statewide voting system fails to provide enough money for voting machines, equipment, software and personnel, resulting in an estimated $82 million shortfall. The Georgia secretary of state’s office responded that the groups’ estimates are incorrect, the voting system is within its budget, and the state government has already ordered 3,000 additional machines to meet voters’ needs. The cost analysis was produced by Fair Fight Action, a voting rights group founded by former Democratic nominee for governor Stacey Abrams; FreedomWorks, which advocates for free markets and small government; and the National Election Defense Coalition, an election security organization. “By imposing this unfunded mandate, the secretary of state has put all 159 counties in a position of either enacting massive local tax hikes or facing widespread lawsuits at taxpayer expense,” said Jason Pye of FreedomWorks.

Georgia: Problems with new Georgia voting system found in test election | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Voting machines rebooted in the middle of voting. Computers couldn’t program the cards voters use to activate voting machines. One voter inserted a driver’s license into the voting machine, causing it to go blank. Those were some of the 45 incidents reported during a test run of Georgia’s new voting system, according to a summary from the secretary of state’s office. The pilot was conducted in six counties, where 27,482 ballots were cast in this month’s election. The test identified issues with the voting system, which combines touchscreens with printed-out paper ballots, that can now be corrected before it’s used statewide in the March 24 presidential primary, said Gabe Sterling, the chief operating officer for the secretary of state’s office. “These problems are mainly human-based,” Sterling said. “We can train and train, and our plan is to train again. That’s going to be the main thing that’s going to make these things work properly.” Sterling said he’s confident that the state’s voting system will be ready for the presidential primary, and all equipment is scheduled for delivery by late January.

National: Election vendors should be vetted for security risks, says watchdog group | Joseph Marks/The Washington Post

The federal government should start vetting companies that sell election systems as seriously as it does defense contractors and energy firms, a top election security group argues in a proposal out this morning. Under the proposal from New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice, government auditors would verify election companies and their suppliers are following a raft of cybersecurity best practices. They would also have to run background checks to ensure employees aren’t likely to sabotage machines to help Russia or other U.S. adversaries. The suggestion comes as Congress continues to fight over whether to tighten election security as candidates ramp up for the 2020 election. Senate Republicans, especially, have stalled further security measures, even as observers warn that the next election is ripe for hacking by foreign adversaries such as Russia, which interfered in the 2016 contest. Vendors of voting machines, however, have traditionally been exempt from close review by federal regulators. “These vendors are a critical part of securing our elections, but we haven’t really focused on them at all,” Lawrence Norden, director of Brennan’s election reform program and one of the authors, told me. “We need to understand that they’re critically important but also represent a vulnerability that there needs to be oversight for.”