There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that confidence in our elections administration in Georgia is in the gutter. Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger can issue all the announcements he wants about how secure the election was but he may as well be saying that professional wrestling is real. There are more eyeballs rolling at his announcements than there are wheels on rolling on I-75.

Raffensperger reported that a forensic audit of voting machines by an independent auditor, retained of course by the Secretary of State, showed no signs of tampering, cyber attack, or election hacking . Given the feelings of many Georgians, that report is like hearing, “Move along, nothing to see here.”

Plaintiffs in alleged fraud cases filed suit to secure the voting machines for inspection. The judge issued an injunction to lock all machines down. Raffensperger argued that the machines were under the control of the counties, not his office. The judge reversed his ruling. Plaintiffs filed again specifying several counties and the judge again issued an injunction.

In all the back and forth, a server disappeared from Fulton County. Reportedly it was for a software upgrade. A few days before that, officials at the Cobb County elections office were shredding documents. They denied shredding ballots or important papers.

Both of these occurrences may have been coincidental and routine, but the timing was like throwing gasoline on a fire. As one of my plainspoken rural friends said about the Cobb County incident “they shouldn’t be shredding anything, even if was used toilet paper.” Elections officials in both counties should have known how their actions would appear.

Yesterday Raffensperger said in a press conference that he was, “getting a little tired of always having to wait on Fulton County and always having to put up with their dysfunction.” The problem is that this is the same hand-wringing we have heard for years. Georgians are sick of talk and want to see something done.

He also announced that he was opening an investigation into third party groups who are attempting to register non-residents to vote in the upcoming runoff. I personally have seen registration applications mailed to individuals who died several years ago. I will make sure that Raffensperger gets these but I honestly am not holding my breath to see anything happen.

You may recall that after the Primary elections, Raffensperger announced that his office identified 1,000 people who voted twice in the primary. He promised that they would be prosecuted for voter fraud.

I must have missed the announcements of arrests, indictments, trials, or convictions. I would rather see press announcements of what they actually DID rather than pompous proclamations of what they are going to do, especially when it never seems to get done.

Before the primary we all received firm assurances that the system was so secure that it was impossible to vote twice. Apparently 1,000 people figured out how to get through that security in the primary election. I guess that they were just warming up for November.

In one of the most, “do-you-take-me-for-a fool” statements, Raffensperger resisted the examination of absentee ballot envelopes by saying that it was impossible to match signatures to the ballots because the ballots have no signatures. Anyone who knows anything about elections knows that there are no identifying marks on the absentee ballot. That’s why we call them secret ballots.

Then again, I do not know what is in that QR code on the ballot that is printed when I vote in person. For all I know there is a picture of me standing at the voting machine and casting the ballot complete with how I voted.

It would seem that at a very minimum, there should be a publicly available document that accounts for and reconciles every ballot for every precinct in every county.

* How many ballots did you print before the election?

* How many absentee ballots did you mail + how many paper ballots did you have to use due to machine problems + how many ballots you voided + unused ballots should = paper ballots printed before the election.

How many absentee ballots you scanned should be the same as the number of valid absentee ballots received and there should be an absentee envelope, signed, reviewed, and approved for each one scanned.

There should also be the unopened and still sealed absentee ballots that were rejected, complete with the record of why they were rejected. This is in the law.

I have seen no simple reconciliation anywhere. If these reconciliation documents do exists, then Raffensperger would help settle a lot of questions by simply producing them.

Accounting and reconciliation of ballots should be part of the normal election day activities. If those numbers are not close, then the election is automatically suspect for fraud or incompetence.

It should not require a candidate to protest. The Secretary of State should be the first one in line to refuse to certify the election.

Then there is the question of signatures on absentee ballots. Poll watchers signed sworn statements of suspiciously looking pristine ballots, absentee ballots received after the deadline, yet counted anyway, and other such anomalies. There seems to be a stonewall effort to keep those absentee ballots and ballot envelopes out of the public eye.

When will someone other than elections officials be able to closely examine the envelopes for approved and rejected ballots, received logs, and the actual absentee ballots? Yes, I know you cannot match the ballots to the envelopes, but the absentee ballots should be separate from all the others and there should be the same number of approved envelopes as there are scanned absentee ballots.

Raffensperger would serve himself and the people of Georgia better by communicating the process required to get to the point of actually looking at the envelopes. He should be assuring us that he will do everything in accordance with the appeals and challenge process.

Instead, we get assurances that this was the most secure election ever. That’s like me saying, “You can trust me, I’m a preacher.”

That brings me to the pressing question. What is anyone doing for the January 5 election to avoid some of the real issues that were raised in the November 3 election? Thus far it seems to be nothing.

I did see one common sense proposal that addresses every concern that has been raised. Jeanne Dufort made her proposal in the Insider Advantage.

She wrote an article, “Hand-Marked Ballots: A Proposal for a Defensible Election.” She suggests that Georgia can legally go to hand-marked ballots for the runoff and count the votes using optical scanners.

Her article is very well written, easy to understand, and makes complete common sense. That would allow lawyers to wrestle over the voting machines while the people of Georgia conduct their runoff election for US Senators and Public Service Commission.

Now, would Secretary Raffensperger, Governor Kemp, Lt. Governor Duncan, Speaker Ralston, the State Elections Board, members of the General Assembly, and candidates thank Jeanne Dufort and demand that it be done? If it requires some kind of legislation to mandate that the apparently sovereign nation of Fulton and other recalcitrant counties in the state do it right, then Governor Kemp should call the legislature in session to do it.

We cannot allow a process to continue that we know is fraught with problems. Stop the hand-wringing, finger pointing, and actually do what it takes to restore confidence in the January 5 runoff.

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