Georgia Legislature Passes Bill Keeping Touch-Screen Voting Machines but Adding a Secondary Paper Ballot

On March 14, the Georgia legislature passed HB 316, which retains the existing touchscreen vote-counting machines, but which adds printers to each machine, to print out each voter’s choices. The voter is expected to look at his or her printed copy and check that it accurately reflects what the voter did on the touch-screen. Then the voter deposits the paper ballot in a scanner.

In case there is a dispute that the touchscreen machines performed accurately, the paper ballots are then available to check against the touchscreen results.

HB 316 was controversial, because many legislators opposed this idea and wanted to dispense with touchscreen machines, and simply have the voter mark a paper ballot that could then be read electronically. That system is far more common around the nation. The vote in the House was 101-69. In the Senate, it was 35-21.

The bill also changes various procedures for registration purges, and makes other changes. See this story.


Comments

Georgia Legislature Passes Bill Keeping Touch-Screen Voting Machines but Adding a Secondary Paper Ballot — 8 Comments

  1. How many BRIBES to keep the highly riggable E-voting machines ???

    Where is that Model Election LAW ???

  2. Best option…. reduces count complexity and time unless there is an actual need to use paper ballots. Ideally all of the precincts would be connected together too for near instant state-wise results.

    The only people against this are people that have zero clue how computers actually work. I’ve worked in IT for nearly 20 years. This is easy to do securely.

  3. How come the zillion invasions of A to Z servers [info storage] ???

    See Terminator III movie — FATAL software — written by know-it-all military MORONS

    – Robots attack – END of Civilization — Few human survivors to strike back in distant future.

    So far — How many REAL military panics/alerts in USA/USSR/Russia due to bad/defective computer systems / sensors ???

    HOW FATAL is the mass mania for *instant* results ???

  4. Only Demo Rep could manage to find a way to draw a connection between an apocalyptic science fiction movie and the passage of a voting bill.

    Regardless, for the most part this is a needed bill, especially with the addition of a paper trail. It’s certainly not a perfect bill, nor does it solve all of the problems the state has, but it’s an improvement. That being said, the one point where I am personally disappointed in is the reduction of the number of voting machines per registered voters, as there really isn’t any reason why a reduction is needed from one for every 200 people to one for every 250 people.

  5. I still believe in paper ballots. Yes it may take DAYS to accurately count and recount them but what the hell. Politicians have many months to brain numb us with all their gibberish so if THEY have to wait a whole WEEK to get results… so what? This BS about having to know a result an hour after polls close is just that… BS!

  6. Oregon continues to survive with ALL paper mail SECRET ballots —

    NOT sure how many Oregon scanners have burned out counting the zillion ballots in batches — thousands per hour.

    How many HACKS (attempted and actual), so far, of computer systems (esp. of voting related computers) by Democracy ENEMIES, domestic and foreign ???

    See pending Mueller report about RUSSIA election machinations — 2016 HACK of DNC — by who exactly ???

    IE – ALL election data stuff on computers is now CLASS A2 NATIONAL SECURITY stuff — second only to CLASS A1 WAR codes/orders — part of the above T3 movie plot.

  7. A DRE permits multilingual ballots to be presented in a single language, and can better support voting by persons with physical and visual disabilities (a requirement of federal law). They can also support 100s of ballot styles. They can also assist navigation through the ballot, advancing to the next race after a voter has selected a race. It is also easier to correct an erroneous vote, and simpler protection against overvotes.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.