Georgia's Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, has repeatedly said Paper Ballots will give Georgia Voters “a Physical Recount.”

But under a Proposed Elections Rule, the Only Physical part of the Recount would occur when Poll Workers Feed Ballots into the Tallying Machines.

The Rule Calls for Recounts to be Conducted by Ballot Scanning Machines that Read Votes Encoded in Bar Codes on the Ballots.

Election Officials won’t Review the Electronically Marked Ballots to Check the Accuracy of the Bar-Coded Vote Totals until the State Develops Auditing Rules.

Election Integrity Organizations say Recounts of Paper Ballots should be Done by Hand to Help Ensure that the Printed Marked Ballot Matches Votes Tabulated from the Bar Code.

“You have to have a manual process to confirm a computerized process,” said Marian K. Schneider, the President of Verified Voting, a Nonpartisan Organization that Promotes Accurate and Verifiable Elections. “The best way is to do a hand recount that can look at the human-readable text on the paper output.”

Voters across Georgia will use the State’s New Election system during the March 24th Presidential Primary. They’ll make their Choices on Touchscreens, then Review Printed-Out Paper Ballots behind a Glass Cover before they are Dropped into a Built-In Secure Storage Unit. Then Poll Workers retrieves the Ballots and Hand Feeds them into Scanners the Bar-Code for Tabulation.

Voters will be urged to Review their Printed Ballots for Accuracy, but No one will be able to tell whether Votes Embedded in the Bar-Code were Hacked or Altered.

The Recount Proposal Alarmed Election Integrity Advocates who feel Misled by Raffensperger’s Statements that Paper Ballots will Result in a Physical Recount. “They feel like it’s a bait and switch,” said Marilyn Marks, the Executive Director of the Coalition for Good Governance, a Plaintiff in a Lawsuit seeking Hand-Marked Paper Ballots. “You’re getting an electronic recount, not a physical recount.”

Losing Candidates in Georgia are entitled to a Recount if they Lose by less than 0.5% of Total Votes Cast.

The Printed Text on Ballots will be used when the State begins Basic Tabulation Audits of Election results in November 2020 Elections, followed by more Rigorous Audits by 2024. Audits must be Conducted by Manual Inspection of Random Samples of Paper Ballots, according to House Bill 316, State Election Legislation that Passed last year.

The State Election Board is Collecting Public Comments on the Recount Rule and other Proposed Election Procedures until Feb. 28th, when the Board is expected to Vote on the Proposal.










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