The Douglas County Taxpayers Coalition (DCTC) is concerned that there is no way to confirm the accuracy of the vote tally in next Tuesday’s Primary Election and SPLOST vote and fears the ballot results could be manipulated.
James Bell, head of DCTC, said he is concerned that regardless of how the SPLOST goes, the public will never know if the vote count was accurate. Bell said his concerns are valid after observing the last SPLOST vote in Cobb County.
“In Cobb, the SPLOST was failing by 2% until there was a ‘technical glitch’ in the system,” said Bell. “They were unable to count votes for an hour and a half and when the vote count resumed the SPLOST was leading by 2%.”
Bell points out Cobb’s election results showed the SPLOST vote passed by only 114 votes out of 40,000. In addition, 285 votes were recorded as “non-votes”, a margin of error that could have won the vote.
This week a group, www.voterga.org, filed a lawsuit asking a judge to stop the State of Georgia from using any electronic voting system that does not produce a paper ballot and a system for hand-counting at least some ballots to ensure the accuracy of the machines.
Bell said he does not believe our election officials would attempt to manipulate the election results but the chance of a “technical glitch” is a grave concern. “Voters need to be confident their vote is counted accurately and that results are verifiable,” Bell noted.
DCTC will be watching the results closely.
