Bipartisan Attack on Voting Machines
In this first week of the legislative session, members are circling their wagons and moving forward on the pieces of legislation they deem important enough to push during a legislative session and election year. During election year sessions members are more cautious and thoughtful not to push legislation that will induce an opponent to jump in the race. Conversely, they drop legislation that will get them enough press to keep an opponent out of the race.
Many people do not know that most legislation is passed with a bipartisan majority. Unfortunately, the public is usually only made aware of the intense issues that result in partisan blood bath of words. This session Scot Turner (R-Canton) and Scott Holcomb (D-Atlanta) have spent months trying to make bipartisan changes to our voting machines. Secretary of State Brian Kemp continues to accuse democrats of making a mountain out of a molehill. The bipartisan effort helps to point out that this claim is just Kemp’s way of avoiding doing what the Secretary of State is elected to do – protect our elections.
In this time where we are discussing the integrity of our voting systems, Russian hackers, and iphones that work better than our voting machines, this bipartisan effort is a welcomed change. Rep. Turner posted about his excitement about legislation the duo plans to drop today on the issue. I look forward to seeing who in each party support or ignore an issue that effects all Georgians in the same way.
Representative Turner was so excited about it he could not sleep.
See the duos letter sent to Governor Nathan Deal last year about adding money to the budget for the security of our elections. Scott and Scot letter to Governor Deal
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LaDawn LBJ Jones
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Yeah, sounds like to me a bipartisan approach to wasting some money in GA’s budget. Let’s point out these machines can only be hacked if a person is standing in front of it at the time of hacking. So let’s play this out. A hacker is going to make sure he’s registered to vote, stand in line to vote and fill out the necessary forms of paper and then proceed to the machine and reach around to try and unlock it so he can open it up to start hacking it. You don’t think at any point one of the poll workers isn’t going to say something? And another point that is often left out, these machines are not wired to the internet. Last I heard, hackers couldn’t get through a three prong outlet. Though Sec Kemp has had his own issues with voting issues, this has never really been one of them. And there is a paper trail that his printed out once the votes are pulled. If you have doubts about the security that goes through on this, just watch ballot returns in Gwinnett County sometime.
Yes at some point, the future SoS for Georgia will need to find better machines but lets not return to the days of hanging chads and scantrons from high school!
Sounds so simple, but the fact is that the ballots have to be installed on the machines, and the software used to create the ballots is on… machines connected to the internet. Also, are you still using any of the computers you used in 2000? Me neither. Better machines exist, and they come with a paper trail.