Spalding County, Georgia, Begins Push to Return to Paper Ballots - Full Summary

Topic: Elections

One day, people will learn I don’t tease an announcement of something big unless I know something big is going to happen.  The ages-old lesson of “you can please some of the people all the time, and all the people some of the time, but you’ll never please all the people all the time” applies here as well, as even in the face of good news, some are incapable of being content with a positive outcome.

Still, yesterday’s news out of Georgia is big news on a national level.  Spalding County, which lies just south of metro Atlanta, had a Board of Commissioners meeting yesterday evening, and wound up pulling the proverbial grenade pin on what will certainly bring about major legal battles between the Georgia Secretary of State and the county, and any other counties who would like to throw in with Spalding.

The summary of the evening’s proceedings is as follows:

Commissioners push to defund electronic voting systems, removing $85,000 from the Election Board’s budget.

The board, in a 5-0 vote, gave its consent for the Spalding County Board of Elections to take whatever action they deem reasonably prudent to carry out open, fair and transparent elections, to include using paper ballots instead of the flawed machines.

The next Elections Board meeting will be held on this measure on July 11.

Spalding County Board of Elections recently testified at the State Election Board hearing to refute a dismissal of a case where the voting machines printed a ballot on what appeared to be notebook paper that was then accepted into the scanner as a cast vote.

This investigation is still underway as Kimberly Slaughter and her staff were not in violation of any wrongdoing, but reported the issue immediately and are, rightfully so, still demanding answers on what and how the machines were able to do this.

Alex Johnson, an elections expert of Bernard and Johnson, LLC, wrote a letter which was read into the record tonight by James R. Dutton, of Dutton & Dutton, LLC, in Griffin, Georgia, Vice Chairman of the Spalding County Board of Commissioners.

Conclusion

In the wake of the Halderman report’s release, which heavily criticized Secretary Raffensperger and outlined vulnerabilities of all electronic voting systems, including Georgia’s, Spalding County has acted decisively and quickly.  The county, according to my methodology, clocks in nearly 3,000 votes heavy for Joe Biden in 2020, meaning it would contain 24% of the margin between the two candidates statewide if my numbers are correct.  With fewer than 30,000 votes to process, the county should easily be able to run paper-only elections and count those ballots by hand at the precinct and have them reported accurately and in timely fashion.

Spalding, if this process is completed as expected on July 11, will join Shasta County, California, as counties that have acted to rid the county of the existing electronic voting process to return to simple, transparent, and auditable means of administering elections.  Transparency is key, and Spalding’s officials should be commended for listening to the voice of the people and stand as the only one of 159 counties in the Peach State to have progressed this far.  I hope their example will spread not only throughout the balance of what looms as perhaps the most critical state in the 2024 election, but nationwide.

You can thank the Board of Commissioners by going here.  Citizens Defending Freedom’s Holly Kesler played a key role in advising the board and relaying proceedings in real time for public consumption.

Author’s Note: Thank you for reading this newsflash and working in your counties to provide a more transparent elections process for our national future.  I appreciate your readership and would further appreciate your paid subscription if you are able to help support my cause.  Thank you.