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May 15, 2012
GA DOA Putting Small Poultry Growers Out of Business - Is an Election Bribe the Cause?
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March 9, 2012
Bill Author Abandons His Own Bill in Bizarre Move to Stop Council’s Recommended Ballot Access Improvements
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February 16, 2012 - updated (from December 9, 2011)
Third Georgia Legislator in Two Years Found Dead
Robert Brown, Nancy Schaefer, Bobby Franklin were a group of only a few child advocate legisaltors who had the courage to fight against human trafficking in Goergia no matter where it might lead.
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February 11, 2012
EAC Report Released - HB949 Introduced - Public Input Ignored
The Election Advisory Council report was released this week and is now available on the home page at www.gaeac.org. In spite of the overwhelming public outcry for verifiable voting at the town halls that were conducted last year, the EAC report does not even mention anything about the current voting equipment or the need for verifiable voting. It only mentions a need to move all municipal elections to the same type of unverifiable voting equipment we are currently using to conduct other state elections! But that’s not all. it recommends reducing the petitioning requirements by basing the current petitioning percentages on the number of voters in the last presidential election instead of the number of registered voters. The estimated 25% reduction sounds significant until one understands how bad Georgia’s requirements really are. In spite of the overwhelming public outcry for real ballot access reform and removal of petition requirements, Ballot Access News has confirmed that the proposed petition change would only move Georgia from 50th to 49th, surpassing just North Carolina, which would become the worst in the country if Georgia passed the change into law. HB 949 was also introduced on the same day to implement this change and other "housekeeping" items identified by the council.
September 27, 2011
Georgia Tea Parties and Conservative Leaders Adopt VoterGA Election Integrity, Ballot Access Issues
Click for press release
July 26, 2011
Rep. Bobby Franklin Found Dead in Bedroom
Legislator who supported verifiable voting, open ballot access complained of chest pains; Update: autopsy report states organic heart failure
May 20, 2011
Georgia Constitution Party Endorses HB 494 to Remove All Petitioning Requirements for Candidates in Georgia
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April 27, 2011
Ballot Access, Unverifiable Voting Dominate Public Comments at First Election Advisory Council Meeting Badge
See press releases
March 30, 2011
SOS Investigator for Alleged Cobb SPLOST Cover-up Shoots Husband, Is Arrested for Drugs, Unauthorized Badge
See press releases
March 24, 2011
Machine Flaws, Dubious Results and Deficient Auditing are Key Factors Again in $1.4 billion Cobb SPLOST Tax Levies
See press releases.
February 24, 2011
25 Potential Violations Found Against Douglas Co. Election Officials
Douglas County Election officials were referred to the Attorney General's office for 25 potential violations invovling the controversial 2009 Douglas County Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax (SPLOST)
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December 22, 2010
New Study Defines Cost Savings of Optical Scan vs. DRE
A December 2, 2010 study for the State Legislatre of Maryland,defines the cost effectiveness of optical scan over electronic voting and recommends that the governor honor the previously passed legislation to replace Maryalnd's voting equipment with optical scan equipment. Maryalnd has the same equipment as Georgia.
Click for full study
December14, 2010,
Secretary Announces Elections Advisory Council
Eleciton integrity activists, security experts, computer professionals not included
November 24, 2010
Open Records Request for Georgia Election Data Denied
Click on Press Releases for full story
November 6, 2010
Georgia’s Tammy Adkins Becomes the New Alvin Greene
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October 29, 2010
North Carolina GOP Files Federal Lawsuit Over Electronic Vote Flipping
Click Here for letter from NC-GOP to NC-SEB
October 22, 2010
Media Outlets Exclude Candidates from Debate but Tell Listeners All Are Invited
Click Here for press release
October 14, 2010
The Greatest Scandal in Georgia History?
Click Here for in-depth investigative report
October 11,, 2010
Voting Machine Experts Decline Trustworthy Debate
October 5,, 2010
SOS Office Refuses to Investigate 70 Count Election Fraud Complaint
Click Here for SOS Office Refusal and VoterGA Reply
Click Here for complaint
September 1, 2010
VoterGA Files 70 Count Complaint Against Deputy Attorney General for State Election Board
Click Here for complaint Click Here for SOS IG Douglas Co. Invetigative Report
Click Here for original Douglas Co. August 2009 SEB Transcrip Testimony
Click Here for Douglas County Consent Order
August 24, 2010
SOS Candidates Track Record on Non Partisan Election Issues
Click Here for analysis
August 4, 2010
State Ethics Commission is Powerless to Investigate Real Conflict of Interest
Click Here for a real life high profile example
Aug 2, 2010
VoterGA Expands Debate Challenge to Voting Machine Vendor After KSU Declines
VoterGA founder, Garland Favorito, has sent a letter to Mark Radke, of Elections Systems & Software requesting to debate the trustworthiness of the ES&S voting machines that are used throughout Georgia. Merle King, the director of Kennesaw State University’s Center for Elections Systems previously declined an invitation, The debate would provide a forum for the genral public to have their long standing questions and issues regarding Georgia unverifaible voting machines to be fully addressed.
June 17, 2010 - Revised July 17, 2010
South Carolina Proves Statewide Unverifiable Voting Cannot Be Trusted
Alvin Greene won the U.S. Senate Democratic primary with a near landslide 60-40% edge in unverifiable Election Day voting on ES&S IVotronic machines, but Vic Rawl prevailed in the verifiable paper ballot absentee mail-in count by a solid 55-45% margin. How can that be?
Click here to view spreadsheet of stunning variances in verifiable & unverifiable vote counts
Click here for letter sent by VoterGa to the South Carolina State Elections Commission
May 24, 2010
Former Secretary of State's Performance Marred by Flip, Flop, Lobbyist Influence and Politically Motivated Conduct
Click Here for complete analysis
April 22, 2010
VoterGA Challenges KSU Elections Center to Voting Machine Debate
Click Here for letter to executive director
March 22, 2010
Impeachment articles Filed in GA House Against Secretary of State's Inspector General
Click Complaints tab for details
March 13, 2010
House Bill Proposes Open Ballot Access to All Candidates
ATLANTA, GA – A new bill that was introduced in the Georgia House of Representatives last week would open election ballots by removing the petitioning requirements that are currently imposed on all third party and independent candidates who want to run in local or statewide races. The bipartisan bill, HB1257, would also save time and money for state and counties by eliminating signature verification. It was introduced by Reps. Alan Powell, Tom McCall, Mark Hatfield and “Rusty” Kidd.
Any candidate who is not a Republican or Democrat, must currently gather thousands of signatures from registered voters who are qualified to vote for the candidate before their name can be placed on the ballot in a State House, State Senate, U.S. House or other partisan local race. Only Democrats, Republicans and Libertarians can name statewide candidates now without petitioning.
Georgia is currently ranked by Ballot Access News as having the most restrictive ballot access laws in the country. Some restrictions are 10 times more than the national average of all other states combined. For example, Georgia requires a political party to receive 20% of votes cast in the last gubernatorial or presidential race to run a full slate of candidates. That barrier is ten times the national median of about 2%. Likewise, Georgia requires a third party U.S. House candidate to collect verified signatures from 5% of the registered voters in the district before their name can be placed on the ballot. That barrier is 10 times the average of about .5% that is required by other states.
The restrictions have resulted in a perpetual lack of qualified candidates throughout Georgia. No 3rd party U.S. House candidate has qualified for a normal election since 1943 when existing laws were passed. Only about 39% of all State House races have been contested by both a Republican and a Democrat. Only 44% of legislative races were contested by both a Democrat and Republican in 2004, 17 points below the 61% national average. Georgia is also ranked worst in the nation for political party presidential qualification, having an average of just 1.2 3rd party presidential candidates on the ballot since 1972. In 2008, six presidential candidates were on ballots in enough states to mathematically win the Electoral College but only three of them were on the ballot in Georgia.
Petitioning has recently come under fire due to claims of mistreatment by petitioners. Former Chatham County Republican Commissioner, Jeff Rayno, was referred for a felony investigation in a December 2009 State Election Board meeting on grounds that he forged petition signatures although no forged signature was produced. He filed a U.S. Justice complaint against former chairwoman, Karen Handel, and her Inspector General, Shawn LaGrua, who still works in the Secretary of State’s office. In another case, a petitioner was arrested at a park while trying to collect signatures for a Green party candidate.
The proposed legislation would move Georgia from being ranked as one of the top five most restrictive states in every type of race to a more open ballot access state such as Florida. While offering Georgia voters more freedom of choice, it still maintains qualification fees to deter frivolous candidates. Nevertheless, the bill is expected to encounter opposition from the General Assembly leadership team and partisans in both sides of the legislature. House Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman, Mark Hamilton, will now determine if the bill will get a hearing. A similar but far less comprehensive measure, HB1141, was removed from the hearing schedule last week.
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Feb 24, 2010 SEB dismisses Gallegos from further action
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Feb 22, 2010 - AJC's Jim Galloway criticizes legislators for introducing HB 1215
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Feb. 22, 2010,
House Bill Introduced to Ban GA Voting Machines
ATLANTA, GA – A new bill was introduced in the Georgia House of Representatives last week that would essentially outlaw existing electronic voting machines used on Election Day in Georgia and allow them to be replaced with optical scan voting equipment. The bipartisan bill, HB1215, is now under consideration in the House Governmental Affairs Committee. It was introduced by Rep. Tim Bearden, the vice chair of the committee and co-signed by several representatives including Karla Drenner and Austin Scott, the former chair of the committee.
Georgia’s voting machines have been criticized, even prior to acquisition in 2002, for an inability to produce election results that can be properly verified, audited and recounted. The voting machines lack a Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) system that was available on other machines at that time. The servers also lack audit trail functions necessary to detect vote manipulation that could occur at the county or state levels. The law when purchased required the machines to produce an independent audit trail of each vote cast but officials have since admitted that no such independent audit trail exists.
HB1215 would not only ban existing electronic voting machines but also prohibit use of lever machines that do not produce a recorded ballot. It also includes language that requires mandatory, random audit procedures to be conducted at each precinct after the polls close. The intent is to confirm that votes are being counted correctly on Election Day at the source where they are originally created.
In addition, HB1215 mandates recounts by hand to ensure that any tabulation errors in optical scan equipment used on Election Day are not carried over to the recount. Critics have explained that recent recounts conducted in Atlanta and Roswell mayoral races did not actually recount votes. Electronic results were re-accumulated from internal records that were never verified by the voter. Absentee ballots were rescanned without determining whether or not the vote tabulators functioned correctly.
A new statewide optical scan voting system implementation would require an initial capital outlay of more than $30 million or just over one half of what that state spent on electronic voting equipment and related education in 2002. However, the equipment would be expected to pay for itself in about three election cycles and begin saving the state and counties money after that. Costs of logic and accuracy testing, operational procedures, technical support and logistical activities would be significantly reduced. The savings could be achieved because each precinct would require only one optical scan counter and a ballot marker for the visually impaired instead of up to two dozen voting machines.
Georgia’s AccuVote TSR6 voting machines and tabulation servers were originally purchased from Diebold Inc. just after it acquired them from Global Election Systems. Once equipment fallacies were exposed and intense national scrutiny ensued, Diebold spun off the division and changed its name to Premier Elections Systems. It is now attempting to sell Premier to ES&S in a deal that would result in a single vendor tabulating nearly 70% of America’s votes, often using unverifiable voting equipment.
Georgia is the only state in the union planning to conduct statewide elections in 2010 using unverifiable voting equipment from a single vendor. Most other states have already moved to ban, decertify, replace or suspend the use of similar Diebold electronic voting machines. Nevertheless, history indicates that the office of new Secretary of State Brian Kemp is likely to oppose the measure.
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