The Georgia Election Board voted to require hand-counted ballots in a 3-2 decision as a way of addressing concerns the majority of Americans have regarding the transparency of our election results. Election integrity is certainly a prevailing issue and I believe this is a proactive measure to unequivocally ensure United States elections are honest.
The decision was made as an attempt to make elections in the state more secure. Forty percent of Americans have expressed confidence in the way United States elections are conducted. It is evident that something had to be done since the majority of Americans do not trust the apparatus through which they cast their votes.
Georgia holds the status of a swing state, where elections tend to be decided by the narrowest of margins. In 2020, it was the closest state when it was decided by 0.23%. This fact necessitates a high degree of transparency and accuracy in the state’s election process. It is especially true when several thousand miscounted votes have the potential to swing a presidential election.
In 2000, Florida, which was a swing state at the time, was determined by 537 votes or 0.009%. Whoever won this state in that election was awarded the presidency, and Al Gore would have won if the Supreme Court had not stopped the recount. This is an example that predicates the concerns surrounding transparency in our elections.
The addition of hand-counted ballots does not remove voting machines from the counting process. It is just a way of verifying that the manually counted vote total matches the number that the voting machines find. It does not restrict the right to vote in any way. In fact, it does the opposite. This was a crucial implementation due to the lack of trust in the current way voting occurs. Essentially, it is a mechanism for establishing whether or not voting machines are flawed. If they are flawed, voters may not be accurately represented which would be indicative of a severe problem.
The system that Georgia has moved to is not uncommon across the globe. Many countries have some form of hand-counted paper ballot system that has been shown to be effective. Some of the countries include Finland and Norway, among others. The results show that the majority of their citizens express confidence in their country’s voting process, with 89% of citizens in Finland and Norway expressing such confidence.
This is why it is disheartening to see influential figures oppose the inclusion of hand-counted ballots. Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia expressed disapproval of the implementation of the hand-counted ballot rule as an “effort to turn the democracy on its head.” The allegation that the state of Georgia made this decision to suppress the voters and choose who gets to vote discredits a decision that was intended to do the opposite.
A system intended to prioritize the will of the voters should not be undermined by political attacks and accusations of overturning democracy. Instead, it should be a moment of celebration for the enhancement of the democratic process. Clearly, the majority of voters sense that the election system is erroneous in some way—whether those suspicions are accurate or not, the simple fact is that a lack of trust leads to disenfranchisement and lower voter participation.
Hopefully, this is a model that other states will soon implement as voting is the way in which we hold our elected officials accountable who are there to represent the people. If Americans feel politicians are not doing their job, it is imperative that every voter’s voice is counted.
If we can get to a point where the majority of Americans trust the electoral process, I would anticipate a higher turnout of voters, which further reflects where the people stand.
