Marian K. Schneider: “[T]he current bill will perpetuate the cycle of unverifiable voting in Georgia. Verified Voting cannot support the bill unless significant changes are made.”
The following is a statement from Marian K. Schneider, president of Verified Voting, about why Georgia’s current Senate Bill 403 cannot ensure a verifiable and accurate election system. For additional media inquires, please contact aurora@newheightscommunications.com
“Georgia voters need a secure voting system with voter-marked paper ballots and audits, but instead, Georgia’s electoral system is left insecure and unverifiable. The current version of Senate Bill 403, which recently passed the House Government Affairs Committee, has morphed into a sweetheart deal for a group of voting machine vendors. Georgia voters are simply demanding a verifiable secure election system …nothing more.
“If the intent of the Georgia legislature was to replace its current vulnerable and unverifiable voting systems with a verifiable paper-based system, SB 403 falls so far short of this goal that Verified Voting is compelled to oppose it based on its current language. The legislation does not provide voters with a secure and verifiable voting system based on paper ballots and meaningful audits; it instead sets a framework for needlessly expensive, electronic and insecure voting machines that could be subject to manipulation.
“The citizens of Georgia should demand voting machines which provide them with a voter-marked paper ballot, marked by hand or with an accessible ballot marking device, preservation of the voter marked paper ballot for recounts and audits, and a requirement that, for any audit or recount, the human readable marks and text on the ballots be inspected manually to validate that software used to count the votes operated correctly. Only if all of these components are included can Georgia seriously instill confidence in its elections.
“Unfortunately, the current bill will perpetuate the cycle of unverifiable voting in Georgia. Verified Voting cannot support the bill unless significant changes are made to protect our democracy, even if it is at the expense of voting machine vendors.”