HAND COUNT : POSSIBLE BY LAW, IMPOSSIBLE WITH QR CODES

Yesterday April 4, 2022, at the Cherokee County Board of Elections meeting the attorney for the board tried to make us believe a hand count of votes is prohibited. She based it on a hearing the State Board of elections held regarding Athens-Clark County board of elections voting to use paper ballots in 2020. The Athens-Clarke County was not a hand count, but a total stoppage of Dominion. Not the same thing. Below is my response to the attorney and the board supervisor as well as transcripts of the hearing. A hand count of all elections involving Dominion would have been the fastest, cheapest way to start restoring trust in our elections.

To: Ann Brumbaugh and elections supervisor Anne Dover.

Thank you for the information at the Cherokee County Board of Elections April  4.  I have studied Title 21 consistently for over a year. I find nothing in the code that prohibits a hand count. The legislature should have gotten out front in election integrity and allowed if not required hand counts alongside Dominion as a means of restoring trust. 

In the Athens-Clarke County case that board voted to completely replace Dominion with paper ballots.  It was not regarding a hand count.  The vote was due to not being able to configure all the equipment to comply with law requiring voter confidential voting, which the board was required and authorized to do.  Considering that Dominion is illegal because electors can not read the the Dominion proprietary QR code the State Board and Secretary of state forced Athens-Clark County to use a voting system that should never have been purchased.  The question is why.  The same people voting the same in a different way should produce the same results with only the potential for fraud removed. There is always more than one way to get to the same place. Therefore, we can assume the goal was not the election, but to preserve the fraud capability.  The zeal with which the State Election Board and effectual intimidation of the board by a hearing is suspect.  The board could probably just have asked for configuration help from the State Board and the better practice would have been for the State Board to have offered configuration help rather than intimidation by a hearing.  I am attaching the hearing transcript. 

While nothing in election law prevents a hand count, the fact remains that only Dominion machines can read the QR codes produced by the ballot marking device and thus elections can not be retrieved from computers and replaced in human hands.

I stand ready and willing and believe that others do also to support and defend the board and the legislature in moving toward protecting the right of fair elections that births all other rights. Deborah Davis