State Election Board defeats bid to offer voting with hand-marked paper ballots

Last Tuesday, the four-member Georgia State Election Board unanimously voted down a bid by the Coalition for Good Governance, or CGG, to allow Georgia voters to cast their ballots on hand-marked paper ballots, instead of the state’s voting machines, in instances where it was determined using the state-approved touch-screen voting machines cannot guarantee privacy.

Marilyn Marks, executive director of CGG, spoke before the Election Board prior to the vote, noting that, under the Georgia Constitution, and state legislative law, voters must be allowed to cast their ballots in secrecy, but the current voting machines do not always allow for that.

Speaking of the Dominion Voting System machines, which have been used for statewide elections since 2019, she said, “The screens are so large and so light it’s hard not to see how other people are voting.”

The Dominion Voting System machines all use voting kiosks that include a touchscreen, mounted at eye-level, on which ballot items are displayed and voters cast their vote directly on the touchscreen.  

According to a proposed amendment to state election rules submitted to the Election Board by CGG, touch screens would be required to be positioned so that no one but the voter could be within a 30-foot area behind each machine when voting was taking place on that machine. The proposed rule also specified that an 8-foot space was required between each voting machine and the machine to its left and/or right. 

 Marks told Election Board members that most existing precincts are large enough to accommodate from four to six touch-screen voting stations, and still allow for enough stations for hand-marked paper ballots to make up for the reduction in machines, while also ensuring the voter privacy.   

Board members agreed with Mark’s assertion that changes need to be instituted to ensure that each polling location complies with vote privacy laws and the Georgia Constitution, but argued that other solutions, such as larger dividers between machines or protective shields that make the screens harder to read from a distance, were a better solution than hand-voting options. 

Board member Janice Johnston, prior to moving that the proposal be rejected, stated that allowing both touch screen machine voting and hand marked paper ballots during elections might be “confusing” for voters and poll workers, and detract from the “orderliness” the Election Board is striving to achieve. 

She stated that the Election Board would continue to study the issue and work to come up with a different solution than the one proposed by the CGG.