A Message from the Hardest Working Single Issue Activist in Georgia, Garland Favorito

Garland Favorito never sleeps.

The general election is just around the corner and so it's time to think a little bit about the back end of the process. Millions of dollars have been spent to persuade the citizens of Georgia to pick it's next set of leaders, thousands of hours of effort and countless volunteers have pitched in to try to make thier version of Georgia's future a reality.

Now it rests on the shoulders of ESS and the infamous Diebold voting machines. The people of Georgia will have to accept whatever spits out the back of the DRE's because there is no way to conduct a recount. Ex SecState Karen Handel campaigned on fixing that flaw and did nothing. Current SecState Brian Kemp says fixing the recount issue would cost too much. Garland Favorito keeps reminding all of us of the situation.

The solution? Vote for Libertarian David Chastain for SecState. He will get this corrected.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE


Contact: Garland Favorito

October 28, 2010 (404) 664-4044

garlandf@msn.com

http://www.voterga.org

 

VoterGA Cites Georgia Election Problems

ATLANTA, GA –VoterGA, an election integrity watchdog group, identified today a series of critical election problems that have plagued Georgia since the installation of Georgia’s current statewide voting equipment in 2002. Examples cited are:

·        In 2002, 3,256 test votes were included in actual Cobb County election results

·        In 2005, 285 totally blank voted ballots were recorded in a Cobb County billion dollar SPLOST referendum that was decided by 114 votes. The SPLOST was the only contest on the ballot

·        In 2008, 947 test votes were included in live election results of Lowndes County. A voting machine technician was blamed although she was not present or responsible for the accumulation, reconciliation and certification of results

·        In 2008, Douglas County officials were responsible for creating an unauthorized ballot template,manipulating the votes of all 25,000 Election Day ballots in a spreadsheet and entering the votes into the server once they were satisfied with the results. The officials were never fully investigated or charged for the actions

·        In 2009, Fulton County tried to recount mayoral races in Atlanta and Roswell but could only reprint previous unverifiable results for the electronic votes. They also rescanned the absentee ballots rather than hand-count those, so if the scanner tabulated the ballots incorrectly on Election Day it would alsocount them incorrectly again without detection during the recount.

Secretary of State, Brian Kemp, has consistently stated in public comments and debates with Georganna Sinkfield and David Chastain that the machines are “safe, secure”, “trustworthy” and“working well”.

In lieu of Election Day auditing, the state relies on testing conducted prior to the election.  Critics have long claimed that there are a variety of ways for Georgia’s direct recording electronic (DRE) devices to count differently on Election Day than during testing. An Election Assistance Commission (EAC) committee concluded in 2007 that they “do not know how to write testable requirements to satisfy that the software in a DRE is correct.”

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