Georgia Awards $107M Voting Machine Contract to ==Dominion
The Colorado-based company== will supply the state with 30,000 touchscreen voting machines capable of printing paper ballots. The controversial technology is expected to bring court challenges.
BY MARK NIESSE, THE ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION / JULY 30, 2019
I hope to God in Trump’s 2nd term, he fulfills the promise no more lobbying, this is sickening to read
The $107 million contract will switch Georgia from its longtime elections company, Election Systems & Software, following complaints about malfunctioning machines and unverifiable results during the November midterm election.
Like Georgia’s existing machines, voters will make their choices on touchscreen machines. But after picking their candidates, instead of tapping a button that says “cast ballot,” they’ll click on a button that says “print your ballot.” The printer attached to the machine will then print a ballot on a full sheet of paper, which voters can then review for accuracy before inserting into a scanner for tabulation. The paper ballots will be locked in a ballot box for retrieval as needed for audits or recounts.
Before the contract was awarded, some votersspeculated that the state would continue doing business with its current elections company, ES&S, which has close ties to Gov. Brian Kemp’s administration
Dominion has connections, as well. One of Dominion’s lobbyists, Jared Thomas, has worked on Kemp’s political campaigns since he first won a state Senate seat in 2002. He also worked previously for Kemp in the Secretary of State’s Office. Another Dominion lobbyist, Barry Herron, was vice president of Diebold Election Systems, the company that originally sold Georgia its electronic voting machines in 2002
Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said Dominion’s voting system will protect Georgia voters.
“Elections security is my top priority,” Raffensperger said in a statement. “We look forward to working with national and local elections security experts to institute best practices and continue to safeguard all aspects of physical and cybersecurity in an ever-changing threat environment.”__
Critics of these new voting machines, called ballot-marking devices, said they fail to guarantee that votes are counted correctly. They prefer paper ballots filled out with a pen, not by a computer printer.
“Voter intent is best captured by a person marking on paper who they want to vote for,” said Joy Wasson, a concerned Atlanta voter.
Printed-out ballots will include the text of voters’ choices, but scanning machines will read computerized bar codes to count ballots.
Dominion said paper ballots will help ensure that computerized tabulations are accurate. Tabulation machines will also create a scanned image of each paper ballot as another way for election officials to verify that they’re correctly counted.
“Election officials and voters alike can be assured they are using the most modern, accessible and security-focused system on the market today, with paper ballots for every vote cast to ease auditing and ensure confidence in results,” Dominion CEO John Poulous said.
https://www.govtech.com/security/Georgia-Awards-107M-Voting-Machine-Contract-to-Dominion.html