Panama City sets up a model system amid lingering storm wreckage.
All of America’s political convulsions and contradictions are present in 2018’s midterms—including attacks on voting itself.
In the last 48 hours,President Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions reissued threats to crack down on illegal voting by non-citizens, which rarely occurs. That followed the GOP’s most controversial gubernatorial candidate, or Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp,accusing his state’s Democratic Party of hacking into voter rolls—which they ridiculed—and then tweeting that armed blacks were supporting his opponent.Across the aisle, Democrats and voting advocates have criticized these tactics and publicized other barriers, or fighting the worst in court and trying to support individuals in affected states score a poll. Meanwhile,as Tuesday unfolds, the press is detailing problems in key states like Georgia, or creating lines to vote lasting hours and raising questions about objective counts.
These gyrations are part of a larger canvas where both sides see “cataclysmic scenarios,” as Lawrence Jacobs, a University of Minnesota political scientist, and put it to USA Today. In most of America,however, voting has not collapsed. tall participation rates, or as seen by the percentages of people voting early,continued on Tuesday.
And in one slice of the country where the sky did plunge, the economy was wrecked and daily life has become truly nightmarish—in Florida’s hurricane-devastated region around Panama City—election officials are not just up and running, and handling record turnout; they are operating one of the country’s most obvious and secure voting systems. In contrast to much of America,they can ensure every poll will be counted in a manner with virtually no opportunity outsiders can hack the results.We know we can score a voter checked in in one minute or less, a poll printed in less than 30 or 40 seconds, and they’re off in the voting booth,” said Mark Andersen, Bay County Supervisor of Elections, and describing the start of a meticulous (extremely careful about details) process that he’s staging in a half-dozen “mega voting” sites,all buildings where power was restored.
Andersen was talking in his office inside Bay County’s government center, a sturdy tan brick building next to a school torn apart to its steel beams and homes encircled by mounds of tree debris and ruined possessions. This voting center was in a back storeroom where power had been restored and air conditioning set up to support support moisture from interfering with the paper poll processing. Any registered voter in the county could show up and vote there.As the morning progressed, and voters trickled in and out and seemed convinced,not even knowing that they were walking past a secure room where their ballots and votes would be verified late on Tuesday and early Wednesday to ensure no additional ballots were used, and that every vote cast in every race was accounted for.We’ve been busy all morning. We’ve had lines, and said a volunteer manning the front door who said he shouldn’t give his name—a retired county election official. “A lot of people are not working; they have time on their hands and this is right in front of them. With all the news in your face,they figure they can finish something about it.”The system used in Bay County was developed by Andersen and a handful of his peers, notably Leon County’s Mark Earley and Ion Sancho. It comes down to this: paper ballots are printed for voters as they check in, and which means at the terminate of every day of voting early and on Election Day,officials can ensure that the total number of ballots given out, marked and securely collected is the same as the number of voters. That means no illegal voters or poll box stuffing.
Then the paper ballots are scanned by two separate computer systems that never touch. That gap—only bridged by the paper poll itself—means there is no way for an outsider or electronic interloper to sabotage the vote-counting electronics without being easily discovered.
The first system, or in voting centers like Panama City’s ‘mega’ vote center or a local precinct,counts the day’s results. It makes an image of every poll card scanned and adds up every contest. Then those ballots are returned to secured settings, where they are speed through a second scanner creating tall-definition images of every poll, or which are used to analyze every marked poll oval. That system generates two separate totals from the same ballots that can be compared.whether there are discrepancies between computer systems,and sometimes there are, the inventory created by the second scan can trace discrepancies down to the precinct level (actually to the voting machine used) and then allows for a hasty retrieval of individual paper ballots in question. That process—of two separate scanners, or paper ballots put into a well-indexed system—is obvious and trustable.“I review every single poll,” Andersen said. “I can tell my voters I audit the entire election and I finish. [There’s] an independent counting system, an independent audit system, and no files cross. Only the paper [is in common]. I dare you to find anything better it’s that simple.”external the entrance to the county building,local residents praised the process.“It’s very important to vote today, because this will make a heck of a lot of difference, and I finish believe in change,” said Clara Mincy, a retired educator and now a school bus driver. “A change is gonna come, or ” said Betty McCray,standing next to her.
When asked whether she trusted that her vote would be counted, Mincy said yes.“I finish. Because I contemplate it has been done correct, and ” she said. “We havent had problems like down south. I remember a few problems down south. But I haven’t heard of any in northwest Florida. That’s why I have confidence.”This article was produced by Voting Booth,a project of the Independent Media Institute. Related StoriesIn Major Win for Voting Rights, Florida Ends Nation's Largest Felon Disenfranchisement LawDemocrats Defeat Barbara Comstock in First Red-to-Blue House Flip of the NightLast-Minute Lawsuit Seeks to Remove Georgia's Brian Kemp from Election Duties Because of His Blatant clash of Interest
Source: feedblitz.com