Getting serious about securing the franchise

Sheila and I have served, as volunteers, in several capacities during the 2020 election on behalf of the people of Floyd County and the Floyd County and Georgia Democratic Party. It has been an interesting, and mostly reassuring experience.

Before the voting ended...

We began as ballot monitors a week and a day before the polls closed. There were no ballots counted yet, of course, but the staff was allowed to begin processing absentee ballots to prepare them for, after polls would close on November 3,  scanning and then tabulating the votes. These were the hand-marked absentee ballots filled out at home by the voters then mailed in or delivered to official drop boxes.
Ballot monitors of each party (and sometimes non-partisan groups) simply observe the processing of ballots by the elections staff. Ballot monitors do not touch ballots or interfere in the process. They simply observe. 
During the week preceding Election day, I, like everyone else involved, raised my right hand and swore to perform my duties honestly, confidentially, and in accord with the law.
We sat in a small room with a big table and five temporary elections employees and the Chief Clerk. We observed as a box of ballots was brought into the room by the Clerk and he broke the seal on the box. One employee took a number of the mailed or delivered absentee ballot envelopes from the box and placed them on the table. The employees turned them all upright, tapping the envelopes against the table to assure the inner envelopes would not be damaged when the envelopes were run through a machine to slit them open. Once a group of envelopes were placed on the table those were a “batch” that would stay together for this part of the process. The inner envelopes and outer envelopes were separated and counted and double-checked. The process could not continue until the counts of outer envelopes and inner envelopes matched. Then the counted outer envelopes were removed from the table and carefully placed in a storage box. At this point the remaining inner envelopes are no longer associated with information tying them to an individual voter. Privacy of the secret ballot is thus assured. 
Now those inner envelopes containing the secret ballots, of the voters whose personal information is no longer attached, were slitted and the ballots removed, smoothed and carefully stacked, and counted. Once again the numbers had to match. There is much counting and recounting and organizing the ballots into neat batches for scanning. Then the empty inner envelopes were boxed separately. The ballot “batches” were joined by giant rubber bands and each "batch" given a sequential number. At each stage of this process each "batch" of ballots were carefully controlled.  
Of course along the way special cases arose. Torn ballots, crumpled ballots etc. were separated for repair or even carefully duplicated onto a new substitute ballot by election staff (I did not observe this process). Duplicated ballots are attached to the original ballot to maintain an ability to confirm the correct duplication.   We monitors also observed the computer scanning and/or processing of a few of the the batches of mailed and dropbox ballots. I was impressed with the seriousness and care that the young temporary workers took with their duties.

On Election Night and during the initial count...

I was not only a ballot monitor but also a Vote Review Panel (VRP) member. A VRP is a panel of three including an Elections Committee person, a Republican Party representative, and a Democratic Party representative. The VRP is on duty during the counting to review any vote that is in question as to the voter’s intent. The VRP must assure that each voter’s intent is recorded in each race if at all possible. If there is a disagreement on the panel the three members must make a ruling that satisfies at least two of them. 

So…
On the evening of Election Day dogtired, after many hours of waiting for the process to get started, I raised my right hand again and swore to perform the duties involved in adjudication honestly and in accord with the law and the intent of the voter. 

Let me emphasize: the law is clear that regardless of all else the intent of the voter is paramount. 

As it turned out I was relieved by another Democratic representative before the counting began, very late, that night. Thank goodness; I needed my bed.

The next morning, considerably rested,  I returned to the courthouse and took my turn on the VRP for several hours, judging, with a Republican and an Elections Committee member, ballots with votes that could not be read by the voting software. These decisions were mostly very cut and dried and obvious. Many were overvotes in the special senate race where there were so many candidates; many voters mistakenly marked more than one vote and their votes had to be ignored in that race. Many were write-ins for unqualified persons --- cartoon characters, deities, historical characters, out-of-state politicians, unknown persons, defeated primary candidates, etc. The first time a ridiculous name was read as a write-in we may have chuckled a bit, but soon they became less-than-humorous and downright tiresome. A few were legitimate write-ins and were duly recorded. Another few needing review were the result of stray marks, very light marks, checks or x-marks partly or even completely outside the oval, or of efforts of the voter to change a mark by erasing or scratching out. 

It was interesting and reassuring to me that I and my Republican fellow VRP member came to an agreement in each and every instance. We both took our oaths seriously and voted to approve the intent of the voter even when we might be personally disappointed in the vote.

During the audit (recount)...

The Secretary of State ordered a post-election audit of the presidential vote throughout the state. I observed that special auditing of the vote with other monitors of both parties and non-partisan groups including the Carter Center. We were distressed to learn during this audit that the staff had forgotten to retrieve about 2600 ballots that been temporarily stored as the result of a machine failure. (This is my understanding but I have no direct knowledge of this failure.) That horrible goof-up caused our count in Floyd County to become the topic of national rumors and accusations. The halls of the elections center became a headquarters for broadcast and print news reporters from national and Atlanta-area media folk-- AP, Fox News, WGN, 11Alive, Fox5, WSB etc.
Once again I took the oath to perform the duties involved in adjudication honestly and in accord with the law and the intent of the voter. 
I, with a different Republican this time, and an Elections Committee member, adjudicated ballots that the teams of auditors felt needed review. Since this audit dealt only with the presidential race there were very few ballots that needed adjudication. There was 100% agreement on the VRP on each of the ballots we judged.
After the votes in the presidential race had been recounted, I participated in the careful counting of affidavits to check that total against the number of ballots counted. This was done in two person volunteer teams, one Republican and one Democrat. We counted and recounted thousands of affidavits and I am told that in the end the difference in affidavits and ballots was exactly one. Danged close!

The next morning I was back to observe the preparation for, and the rescanning of,  the ballots -- as AP and other news folks propped themselves in corners to edit their stories and camera operators peered through stair bannisters and doorways to snap pictures of the process.
Once again I had raised my right hand and taken the oath and, then, with the same Republican with whom I had counted affidavits, and an Elections Committee member, I adjudicated ballots that had been kicked out by the software during the final rescan. We noted many of the same deities, cartoon characters, TV Stars, etc. as unapproved write-ins. 

And the audit was over and we could go home.

What I learned so far...

AS you can see, I spent many hours the last three weeks volunteering at the Floyd County Administration building with the Elections Committee, the county elections staff, with non-partisan observers, and with my Republican counterparts. 

After these hours of experience I have the highest regard for the volunteers involved in the Vote Review Panels, Republican and Democratic, Elections Committee, audit staff and volunteers. My three stints on the vote review panel were tedious sometimes, but always cordial. I sometimes had to approve votes for Republican candidates and each of the three Republicans I worked with at different times had to approve votes for Democratic candidates. 

In all that time on the vote review panel, I'll repeat, the Republican and I were always able to agree on whether the voter had made his or her intent plain. I believe each voter in Floyd County had his vote counted as intended unless they messed up and clearly marked more than one candidate, or failed to mark a candidate at all, or wrote in a candidate who (cartoon, fictional, historical, celebrity, relative, neighbor, failed primary candidate, or deity) were not official write-in candidates. 

I agree with the lead editorial in the Rome News-Tribune on November 20, 2020. 

The Floyd County Elections Board, staff, and volunteers are to be commended for their dedication, patriotism, and seriousness. The mistake that was made that resulted in 2600 ballots being temporarily mislaid was a bone-headed error and procedures must be tightened to be SURE that particular mistake cannot recur. Still the people involved did not hide the mistake but immediately reported it and carefully went about correcting the error. 

I hate that someone had to lose his job over it, but had I been on the Elections Committee, I also would have voted to replace the Chief Clerk; that mistake was NOT purposeful, but it WAS incompetent, and on top of a previous reprimand, and some other innocent but troubling missteps that I observed, in my opinion, precluded his continuance in such an office of trust, in my opinion.

The most important thing that I can reassure anyone who wants to pay attention to this 73-year-old moderately liberal Democrat who loves his country and considers the franchise our most precious right, is that the process worked, the Elections Committee and elections staff, and Republican and Democratic volunteers that I worked with took their oaths seriously and did their jobs honestly and to the best of their abilities.

The President's campaign, as is their right since the President-elect won by less that a percentage point in Georgia, has asked for still another recount of the ballots. So once again the elections staff and Democratic and Republican volunteers will gather at 159 courthouses around the state of Georgia to again scan, process, adjudicate, and count the ballots. Since it is a human enterprise there will be a mistake made here and there. The totals will differ from the original count by about a thousand votes (thanks to our county's goof-up and a couple of others around the state) and from the audit by many fewer votes. 

When the process is over, I am convinced, the President-Elect will still be the President-Elect. It was close, but the President-elect won Georgia.

I am very thankful for our honest and patriotic elections staff and volunteers. Because of their dedication we know the will of the voters.