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(s)Elections See other (s)Elections Articles Title: Laughing Their Ossoff: Did Computer-Aided Fraud Play A Role In GeorgiaÂ’s Special Election Upset In a special Congressional election recently held in Georgia, Republican Karen Handel defeated Democrat Jon Ossoff, who went into the election with a significant lead in the polls. It may have been a good old-fashioned political upset - or the result of behind-the-scenes vote-counting fraud. Republican candidate for Georgia's 6th District Congressional seat Karen Handel declares victory during an election-night watch party, June 20, 2017, in Atlanta. (AP/John Bazemore) Republican candidate for Georgia’s 6th District Congressional seat Karen Handel declares victory during an election-night watch party, June 20, 2017, in Atlanta. (AP/John Bazemore) GEORGIA — (Analysis) The recent special election to fill the Georgia Sixth Congressional District seat formerly held by Republican Tom Price, who was appointed to Donald Trump’s cabinet as Secretary of Health and Human Services, was the focus of extraordinary attention and expenditure. More than any of the other 2017 special elections, the GA-6 election was seen as a proxy for approval or disapproval of the Trump presidency and as a clue to the Democratic prospects for retaking the House in 2018. Held in a district that had long been solidly Republican but that had given Trump the barest 1.5-percent plurality in 2016, this election was also the subject of intense media focus. The Democratic candidate, 30-year-old Jon Ossoff, a former Congressional staffer and first-time office-seeker, faced a crowded field of 17 other candidates in a preliminary contest held in April. Among them was Karen Handel, former Republican Secretary of State of Georgia, along with a host of less serious challengers. If no candidate polled at 50 percent of the total vote, the two top finishers would meet in a June runoff. With the wave of Trump disapproval continuing to grow, Ossoff was closing in on the 50-percent mark going into the April 18 election. On election night, as the returns were coming in, Ossoff held over 50 percent until a supposed “glitch” in Fulton County (the three counties in the Atlanta suburbs that comprise GA-6 are Fulton, Cobb, and DeKalb) paused the returns for several hours. When reporting resumed, Ossoff’s total had dropped below 50 percent, where it remained through the final count. Ossoff finished at 48.12 percent; Handel finished second with just over 19 percent of the vote and went through to the June runoff against Ossoff. A “glitch;” a sudden shift from “win seat” to “runoff;” the fact that all but the mailed-in and “provisional” ballots were cast and counted on electronic voting machines with no paper record and no capacity for recounting, auditing or verification; and the extraordinary security breaches uncovered at the Kennesaw State University Election Center, the outfit entrusted with the programming of the computers and the management of voter databases – each of these factors raised red flags about what was reported as a “disappointing” Democratic result, as Ossoff fell 1.9-percent short of the magic 50-percent number. The stage was then set for the June 20 runoff. The perceived significance of this election was mirrored in the funds that poured in for both sides – more than $50 million, an all-time record for a congressional seat. The tracking polls predicted a close election but averaged to an advantage for Ossoff, in spite of the fact that all were conducted using the Likely Voter Cutoff Model for sampling, a methodology that is generally recognized to disproportionately eliminate Democratic-leaning constituencies such as renters, students and poorer voters from the sample, thereby advantaging Republican candidates in the poll results. Melissa Painter walks with her daughter to vote in Georgia's 6th Congressional District special election at a polling site in Sandy Springs, Ga., June 20, 2017. (AP/David Goldman) Melissa Painter walks with her daughter to vote in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District special election at a polling site in Sandy Springs, Ga., June 20, 2017. (AP/David Goldman) With the exception of a single poll conducted by a polling firm identified with an “R” (that is, as working for Republican clients), Handel never held a lead in the polls going into the runoff election. Nonetheless, on the basis of my own experience observing and handicapping U.S. elections in the computerized voting era, I publicly predicted (speaking at a conference on June 2) with complete confidence that Ossoff would lose to Handel. Indeed, I promised that it was such a lock that, should Ossoff win, I would cease all election integrity activities and concede that I was nothing more than the wild-eyed, tinfoil hat “conspiracy theorist” that we are all so often accused of being. Fortunately for my career, Handel came through with flying colors and won by 3.8 percent, finishing with 52.87 percent to Ossoff’s 48.13 percent. Kellyanne Conway summed up the reaction among leading Republicans when she tweeted “Laughing my #Ossoff.” Follow Kellyanne Conway ✔ @KellyannePolls Laughing my #Ossoff 10:42 PM - 20 Jun 2017 16,567 16,567 Retweets 49,575 49,575 likes Twitter Ads info and privacy The Democrats, who have gone zero for five in special elections and are seemingly unable to win anything in spite of Trump’s lead-balloon popularity, started wailing about new strategies and new leadership. The bounteous and bitter fruits of apparent victory and apparent defeat, having had a profound effect upon political expectations and strategies, and indeed upon all aspects of political behavior, going forward. Prior to the election, legal action to compel that votes be cast on paper (and counted by optical scanner) to provide a durable record for verification purposes failed when a judge ruled that it would be too burdensome on the state to print ballots for GA-6 and to use its existing optical scanners (“OpScans,” which were being used to count mail-in ballots) to count election day ballots. As a result, only mail-in ballots and provisional ballots – approximately 10 percent of the total votes cast – were cast on paper and in any way verifiable. The remaining 90 percent? For that, we’d just have to trust the Kennesaw State Election Center, its director Merle King, and their already-breached security protocols. It is worthy of note that this was a single-contest election that could have easily been counted observably, in public, by hand, within two hours of the polls closing at minimal expense (though plenty of volunteers would have likely poured in). The Dutch, having taken one whiff of our 2016 elections and being aware of the security risks in computerized counting, changed their protocol after two days of consideration and counted their 2017 election by hand, joining a growing list of other advanced democracies in doing so. Verifiable vs. unverifiable counting: an enormous disparity The Georgia Secretary of State elections website helpfully breaks down vote totals by type of ballot cast. There are four types of voting: election day in-person voting, early in-person voting, vote-by-mail and provisional ballots. The first two are cast and counted on computerized voting machines, which permit no meaningful verification, either by audit or recount. Mail-in and provisional ballots, on the other hand, are cast on paper and counted on OpScans, the paper then being retained, by federal law, for 22 months – which would, at least in theory, permit verification processes to be undertaken. The results for each type of voting are shown in the table below: Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread
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