Spalding Board votes to hand count all ballots prior to certifying future elections
Tonight, the Board held a Specially Called Meeting and voted to execute a hand count using the human-readable portion of the ballots for all future Spalding elections. The hand count would then be compared to the counts reported by the machines. If the hand count does not match the machine count, the election would not be certified.
On July 10th, residents and members of the Spalding Board of Elections were shown how hand counting proceeses could be efficiently used in Spalding elections.
The next day during the Board of Election meeting, a Board member moved that Spalding commit to using only voting processes that could be human verified and that would increase voter confidence in the elections. That motion was ultimately tabled in order to provide public notice prior to consideration of such a step.
Since Dominion voting machines produce ballots that include bar codes which are not human-readable they would not satisfy the requirements of that motion, consequently the County would likely have to choose another method of voting – perhaps hand marked ballots and hand counting. One speaker this evening pointed out that a U.S. District Court found Secretary of State Raffensperger’s claims “not credible.”
During public comments, a number of speakers from counties across Georgia, provided examples of erroneous voter registrations, “phantom” voters, and votes cast by people who had previously died.