Originally published at: Fulton County Judge Derails Georgia Election Board’s Last Minute Plans - TPM – Talking Points Memo
A Fulton County judge this week handed down a pair of decisions that derailed, at least in part, the MAGA-controlled Georgia State Election Board’s efforts to complicate the counting of votes through a series of rules that raised the specter of election-certification chaos. On Tuesday night, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney paused one…
So there are a couple of Georgia Repubs who aren’t completely sworn to serving their orange master, Mauron. Thank goodness.
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Someone who was an election/poll worker explained this the other day. If you know how many paper ballets you started out with, then you only need to count “spoiled ballots”=voter marking error, and provisional ballots cast. It’s call subtraction. If they the State Election Board wants paper ballots counted, by hand then count them before Nov 5th. Subtraction works, if it didn’t they wouldn’t have been using this system since, well forever.
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But the goal isn’t certifying the election, it’s about giving Trump every chance possible (or impossible) to win or claim he would have won if X had not occurred. Republicans aren’t looking for free and fair elections, they’re looking for technicalities and conspiracies.
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Then they’re going to have to explain how subtraction doesn’t work.
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Speaking of Georgia…
He made it.
Nunc dimittis servum tuum, Domine, secundum verbum tuum, in pace.
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Republicans in general bought into the theory that low voter turnout HELPS them, so they don’t want every eligible voter voting. Over the years, Republicans have passed laws to restrict early voting, change voting laws, manipulate voter rolls and generally discourage voting, especially by people of color. The sinister tactic is to allocate election resources in an unequitable manner- understaff and underequip higher-population, majority minority voting precincts, while giving more staff and voting machines to less-populated suburban, majority precincts.
This time around, people remembered what it was like to stand in ridiculously long lines for hours to vote. 328,000 people voted in Georgia ON THE FIRST DAY OF EARLY VOTING!!! Some of them stating they want to avoid any potential chaos, and an election board trying to change the rules after voting has started is nothing but pure chaos.
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Thank you, Khaya Himmelman, for correctly stating that it is the local elections officials, not the State Elections Board, who certify their vote totals.
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Gosh this is confusing (intentionally on the election board’s part). So, the judge ruled that they have to certify but there’s still two existing laws that say they don’t have to certify under certain conditions?
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Judge McBurney is on a roll. A couple of weeks ago he struck down Georgia’s 6-week abortion ban, writing:
“A review of our higher courts’ interpretations of ‘liberty’ demonstrates that liberty in Georgia includes in its meaning, in its protections, and in its bundle of rights the power of a woman to control her own body, to decide what happens to it and in it, and to reject state interference with her health care choices.”
(the ban was reinstated a week later by the Georgia Supreme Court)
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I’m a bit puzzled by this. I thought that “counting the paper ballots” meant more than simply determining how many paper ballots were returned. I thought that it meant determining how many votes were cast for each candidate or measure that appeared on all of the returned ballots, which cannot be computed simply be subtracting the number of spoiled ballots from the number of returned ballots. Am I missing something?
Shorter McBurney:
GTFO, you dipshit assholes.
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See I thought it was that too. But reading on further reporting was that the GA state election board wanted counts by hand of how many ballots were cast. They didn’t trust the machines. Because doggonit we saw in 2020, in a limited way, how slowly hand counting of ballots goes if your actually looking at they were marked.
I just got my sample ballot for St Louis County. I have to vote on 9 elected positions, 5 constitutional amendments, 4 props, 24 state judges, and then two local city things.
I really can’t imagine two people counting my filled in ballot would be more correct than the machine that scans my filled in rectangles.
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Not laws, rules promulgated by the State Elections Board. They can’t abrogate their constitution or existing law. How they are to be enforced, whom they bind and to what extent, are beyond my ken. @txlawyer might have specific knowledge, and certainly has a good grasp on how to approach interpreting them. there are several lawyers among the hivers who could speak at least to the latter. @ncsteve, for example, has contributed much to my understanding, and so have several others.
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What’s interesting is they want them counted in groups of 50. Fulton County, GA had approximately 527,925 ballots cast in 2020. That’s 10,558.5 batches of 50. Just counting the pieces of paper might take 28 seconds (obtained by doing it myself) - and not allowing for slowing down after the first thousand or so would take a total of 82 man hours. That’s not tallying votes, just counting the pieces of paper.
Now, considering there will be about 5 million votes cast, it would take more than 30 days of man hours to count them in batches of 50.
If you’re tallying votes -
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You see their maths be doing poorly on that Election Board. If I were governor and had to deal with these idiots I would have ask them to demonstrate what they wanted done.
Some people need hands on learning.
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Others need 2x4 learning.
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I just read this amazing quote defending the decision of the election board:
“The majority of this election board has identified that having this reconciliation process is important. That was a priority,” said Brad Carver, an attorney for the Georgia Republican Party. “The General Assembly can’t foresee every particular circumstance in a changing environment. That’s why we have executive branch agencies in the first place. They’re the subject matter experts.”
WTF? Federal executive agencies… Bad! State executive agencies no problemo.
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Synonyms:
- clue-by-four
- splain (as in “here, let me splain it to ya”)
- LART (Luser Attitude Readjustment Tool)
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