Skip to main content

Georgia under fire for lax voting security after precinct’s 243-percent turnout

Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Amidst growing concerns over national voter fraud during major elections, a microscope has been turned on Georgia where concerns over inflated voter numbers, phony ballots, and poor voting machine security following the state’s 2018 primary election. In one grievous instance, a precinct with just 276 registered voters recorded 670 ballots, a 243-percent turnout.

Election interference is one of the largest talking points in the U.S. and has been since the 2016 presidential election. As we move toward the midterm elections in November this year, even greater scrutiny is being faced by states that appear more susceptible to it than others. Georgia has swiftly arisen as a state with most concern, with a number of noted instances of problems with voting in the primaries that took place in May this year.

Related Videos

A federal lawsuit against the state has begun to turn up evidence of a number of notable problems with the primary voting procedure. McClatchy reports massive swings in registered voter numbers, testimony from many voters who found themselves turned away at polling stations or told to go elsewhere, the issuing of incorrect ballots, and major issues with the voting machines themselves.

Georgia is just one of four states that use voting machines which cannot and do not provide a paper proof of a vote, making them hard to audit. The 16-year-old machines have suffered freezes and crashes on election days, and as Ars Technica highlights, key data that showed poor security on these machines mysteriously disappeared during a 2017 investigation.

Georgia’s Secretary of State, Brian Kemp, has promised to conduct a bipartisan investigation into changing voting machines before the 2020 elections, though that would not take place in time for the 2018 midterms. However, that may not be necessary, as a group of senators on both sites of the aisle have called for a ban on all paperless voting machines. While it is far from being passed into law, it may well provide more protection against voter fraud in the future.

Some hope that blockchain technology might provide a better system for voting security, but it’s no silver bullet to a problem that appears only more stark as the midterms draw closer.

Editors' Recommendations

Tesla factories’ security cameras caught up in wider hack
Tesla Gigafactory

A Silicon Valley startup offering cloud-based security camera services has had its systems breached in an attack that gave hackers access to numerous live feeds, some of them coming from Tesla factories.

Verkada, which launched in 2016, had around 150,000 of its cameras hacked, with many of the devices installed in hospitals, schools, police departments, prisons, and companies that besides Tesla also included software provider Cloudflare, according to a Bloomberg report on Tuesday, March 9.

Read more
NASA astronaut Kate Rubins just cast her vote — from space
nasa astronaut kate rubins just cast her vote from space  iss voting booth

Voting from space is a thing.

With no waiting in line, and a voting booth just a short distance away, NASA astronaut Kate Rubins on Thursday cast her presidential election ballot from the confines of the International Space Station (ISS).

Read more
Next presidential debate will be virtual, but Trump says no
trump versus biden

UPDATE: President Trump has suggested he will refuse to take part in the debate if it's held remotely, telling Fox Business on Thursday morning: "I'm not going to waste my time on a virtual debate," adding, "You sit behind a computer and do a debate, it's ridiculous."

Next week’s second presidential debate between President Donald Trump and the Democratic hopeful, former Vice President Joe Biden, will take place virtually due to coronavirus concerns, the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) confirmed on Thursday, October 8.

Read more