Your Right To Vote Could Be Challenged By Another Voter

As many of us are counting down the days to the presidential election, some Donald Trump supporters are adding ways and means to possibly skewer the results.

The Brennan Center for Justice reported that Trump’s infamous call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger is now a key piece of evidence in the criminal investigations into the former president’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election: “During the January 2, 2021, call, Trump invoked several false claims of widespread voter fraud to pressure Raffensperger to reverse the state’s election results, ranging from lies about out-of-state and dead voters to conspiracy theories about drop box stuffing and compromised election equipment. These false claims drove the January 6 attack on the Capitol and continue to damage our democracy.”

One of the most recent changes is the one the Georgia Board of Elections recently approved which states that all ballots are to be hand counted. Some supporters of this change say it  guarantees that all ballots will be counted.

At first, I wasn’t so sure of that. A person who wants to cheat, will usually finds a way to do just that. But then Raffensberger, whose job it is to defend Georgia’s election integrity laws denounced the 11^th hour effort to impose new activist rulemaking that would undermine Election Integrity Act (S.B. 202).

It’s not going to happen, the Secretary of State said.  

“Georgia voters deserve confidence that election results will be timely reported on election night as required by S.B. 202 and S.B. 189,” Raffensberger said. “Misguided effort to impose new procedures like hand counting ballots at polling places make it likely the Georgia’s will not know the result on election night. Additionally, having poll workers handle ballots at polling locations after they have been voted, introduces a new and significant risk to chain of custody procedures. Georgia law already has secure chain custody protocol for handling ballots, and to change these laws by unelected bureaucrats on the eve of the election, introduces the opportunity for error, lost or stolen, ballots, and fraud.”

Also, here in Georgia, a new law went into effect in July, that makes it easier for people to attempt to kick others off the rolls through voter challenges.

In my opinion, Georgia voter challenges were always far too easy. Now, Georgia voters face increased risk of losing their right to vote or being forced to defend that right at public hearings, and election deniers have wide latitude to spread disinformation and waste election official time.

These challenges are fueled by false claims about the 2020 election being “stolen,” including allegations that ineligible people voted, even though all evidence shows there was no widespread fraud in that election.

“The effects of the new law, Senate Bill 189, already are being felt, The Brennen Center reported. “The Bibb County party chair challenged 243 voters; the local board put 45 of those voters into ‘challenged status,’ they will have to take extra steps to have their ballots counted this fall. Also in early July, an individual submitted two lists comprising around 34,000 voter challenges that alleged only that these people may have a new address. The county elections supervisor began the process of mailing those voters notices but was clear that he would not remove voters who don’t respond.”

Other information from The Brennen Center: Some county election boards tasked with implementing this undemocratic law are taking steps to mitigate the damage. Fulton County’s board, for example, advised that it will continue to apply federal safeguards for voters.

·        Challengers must have specific evidence as opposed to the generalized evidence they often present.

·        The board will not remove anyone from the rolls on the basis of clerical errors such as a typo in an address.

·        Simple list matching is not enough to remove someone from the rolls.

All counties in the state should follow this example.

“In Georgia, any registered voter can file an unlimited number of voter challenges with their local elections board alleging that people on the voter rolls are not eligible to vote," the center reported. "Activists have filed around half a million challenges going back to the January 2021 Senate runoffs in the state.”

 A federal court recently found  that the tactics used in mass challenges filed in Georgia in 2021 were “shoddy” and “rife with errors.”

 OK, first the good news, then the bad. The good news is that county election boards have consistently rejected these challenges over the last few years.

Time and again the boards said that challengers didn’t provide enough evidence to remove anyone from the rolls. Local officials who reviewed the challenges described them as “guesswork” and “inaccurate assertions.”

 The bad news is that failures only prompted challengers to double down. Some groups created software that automates the process of generating mass challenges.

 So now, the challengers can send out massive amounts of junk mail.