Columbus finishes audit of presidential votes after volunteers work through weekend
After working through the weekend, volunteers auditing Columbus’ 80,000-plus votes cast in the Nov. 3 presidential election finished their work Monday night.
Nancy Boren, executive director of the Muscogee County Board of Elections and Registration, said the unpaid auditors representing the local Democratic and Republican parties were done by 7 p.m., so they would not have to come back Tuesday to wrap up.
Called a “risk-limiting audit” intended to test the accuracy of Georgia’s new touchscreen ballot-marking voting machines, the process essentially is the same as a hand recount, with a representative from each party examining and counting the ballots.
Ballots that were not clearly marked were set aside for an auditing committee to review to see whether the voters’ intent could be determined. That committee has a Republican, a Democrat and an elections board appointee.
When the auditors broke for lunch at 1 p.m. Monday, Boren said they’d been through about 60,000 ballots.
According to the official election results the five-member county elections board certified on Nov. 6, the total votes cast here in the presidential race came to 80,835 out 130,878 residents registered, a turnout of 61.75%.
Now that the county’s audit is finished, the results will be sent to the Secretary of State, who hoped to certify Georgia’s election results by Friday. Once the statewide vote is certified, a candidate losing by a margin of half a percent or less may request a recount, or the Secretary of State may order one.
That recount would not be a hand count, but would require feeding ballots back through the optical scanners used for the initial vote count.
As outlined in a 2019 Georgia law, the audit was to be a statistical sampling of ballots to test the new voting machines, but the margin in Georgia’s presidential race was so tight that Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger decided to re-examine and recount all the ballots from that contest.
Sixteen volunteers doing the work were divided into eight teams, and started reviewing ballots at 11:15 a.m. Friday. Boren said they continued until 7 p.m. Friday, from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Saturday, and 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Sunday.
Secret ballot
Though the audit process went smoothly without objections from either party’s representatives, critics have complained that the auditors could not authenticate ballots cast absentee by mail, because they did not examine the voters’ signatures.
Election workers use signature comparisons to determine whether the voters casting the ballots are the voters registered under those names: They look at the signature on the oath accompanying the ballot, and compare it to the voter’s signature on registration documents. It is the primary security measure, under Georgia law, for ensuring the vote’s not fraudulent.
Because voting in the United States is by secret ballot, the voter’s identity is considered confidential. Only election workers examine signatures to note any discrepancies. The volunteers conducting the audit are not allowed to violate that privacy by seeing how their neighbors voted.
An absentee by mail ballot package has a white envelope containing the ballot and a yellow envelope with the voter’s signature. Election workers separate those to tabulate the vote, and auditors do not see the yellow envelopes bearing voters’ signatures, Boren said.
“There is absolutely no way to tie the ballots that they are auditing back to the voter who cast that ballot,” she said. “That is absolutely the principle of having a private and secret ballot…. Think about if you’ve ever voted in Georgia. Have you ever signed your name to a ballot? No. That’s part of our guiding principle, that you have a private ballot.”
Regional updates
Georgia’s hand-recount of votes cast in the 2020 presidential election is underway. In order to observe this historic undertaking, several of Georgia’s newspapers are collaborating to provide you with a statewide view. The Athens Banner-Herald, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Augusta Chronicle, The Columbus Ledger-Enquirer, The Macon Telegraph and The Savannah Morning News will share their collective work with you until the recount is complete.
ATHENS-CLARKE COUNTY
thens-Clarke County could finish its recount today, said Athens-Clarke County Director of Elections and Voter Registrations Charlotte Sosebee.
They have finished counting around 30,000, including absentee and Election Day Ballots and began today on about 23,000 ballots from early voting.
At the same time, they’re getting ready for a runoff election for the Western Circuit District Attorney job on Dec. 1
The public can watch on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aL8YaoRoCXA&feature=youtu.be
Lee Shearer, Athens Banner-Herald
BRYAN COUNTY
Bryan County completed its hand recount Saturday afternoon. According to election officials, 21,474 voted in the county. The data was being entered in the Secretary of State’s online on Monday.
Steve Scholar, Savannah Morning News
OCONEE COUNTY
Oconee County has completed an audit of the Nov. 3 Presidential election and will present the results to the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office, according to Oconee County Board of Elections Director Fran Leathers.
Oconee County began its election recount on Friday and completed it on Saturday, she said Monday.
Those results will be released by the Secretary of State, but only after all counties in the state have completed their audits, according to Leathers.
During the Nov. 3 election, President Donald Trump received 16,595 votes, Democratic Party challenger Joseph Biden received 8,162 votes and Libertarian Party candidate Jo Jorgensen received 411 votes.
Leathers said those doing the audit of the election reported the vote count through three batches, those being the absentee by mail, early voting and election day totals.
Wayne Ford, Athens Banner-Herald
ATLANTA
DeKalb County
DeKalb County finished counting ballots shortly after 10 p.m. Sunday, a county spokesperson said. The county will transmit the results to the Secretary of State’s Office on Monday morning.
DeKalb election workers counted some 373,000 ballots by hand over two days.
Elections director Erica Hamilton said the counters “worked tirelessly, while under a spotlight, and we’re proud of our collaborative efforts across the county and with the City of Stonecrest to make this happen. You can count on DeKalb.”
David Wickert, Atlanta Journal Constitution
Cobb County
After Cobb County stopped counting Sunday around 6 p.m., Elections Director Janine Eveler said workers had input 270,000 votes in the ARLO system.
She added, “There are many more ballots that have been audited and not entered yet.”
More than 390,000 people cast votes in the presidential race in Cobb.
Eveler said she was not calculating the cost of the manual recount, which will resume Monday.
Meris Lutz, Atlanta Journal Constitution
Fulton County
One recount team of two people were counting the final Fulton County ballots just before 4 p.m. Sunday.
Spokeswoman Jessica Corbitt said the recount finished sooner than expected because of the number of volunteers who showed up to count.
The plan was to have 130 teams of two counting but 172 teams started the recount Saturday morning she said, and worked up to 10 hours.
Corbitt said officials worked to set up an efficient process for the recount. More than 10 runners were dispersed around the room to pick up ballots or answer questions when counters raised a paper that displayed a checkmark, which meant they had finished a batch of ballots, or a question mark indicating they needed something.
Fulton brought in six people to enter the tally numbers into the computer for the Secretary of State’s office. Saturday there was only one person entering the data.
“We’re happy that it’s gone well,” Corbitt said. “It’s gone smoothly.”
Corbitt said she was unclear on how the Secretary of State’s office will inform the county on the results.
Adrianne Murchison, Atlanta Journal Constitution
This story was originally published November 16, 2020 at 4:04 PM.