The news that over 1,000 voters may have voted in the wrong district in the Republican-only GA-28 primary is just the tip of the iceberg. Big picture in a moment.
State Rep. Dan Gasaway lost the primaries for District 28 in northeast Georgia, which covers Banks, Habersham and Stephens counties
After the election, Gasaway said his wife alerted him of the error.
After investigating, he found up to 1,200 people got assigned to the wrong district.
Gasaway lost the primary by 67 votes. He’s filed suit against Habersham County, the largest of the counties in the district, to force a re-do. A judge must rule on whether a new election will be held.
What’s alarming about this story is how it happened — and where else it’s happened.
(T)he day after the election, Gasaway's wife came home from work and said her colleague couldn't find his name on her ballot even though she lives in his district.
Gasaway grew suspicious. He obtained voter data, plotted voters' addresses on maps of his district and concluded that at least 67 voters -- the margin of victory -- either incorrectly received ballots for another district or should not have been allowed to vote in his district's election at all.
Errors happen, but it’s possible that the voter database was hacked, not to remove voters, which they’d notice when denied a ballot, but to change their designated district, which could easily have gone undetected.
This may seem inconsequential to us, being a Republican-only primary in one Georgia district, but this could have been a trial run for November, when the stakes will be much higher. More concerning: was this an isolated incident or could it be a widespread problem?
Here’s a fun exercise: using the search engine of your choice, search on the term “voters assigned to wrong district” without specifying a state, and see how many states appear in the results:
The first page of my results shows that voters have been assigned to wrong districts not only in Georgia, but also in Virginia and Ohio this year. Yet few states are shoring up their systems before November.
Georgia is especially vulnerable since it is one of five states that rely entirely on paperless voting machines, but there are many places where errors can occur — or be introduced. Just as a rough, off-the-top-of-my-head wild-ass guess, a list of places where hacking could screw up an election include the following:
- the voter registration database; a hacker wouldn’t need to drop anyone, just change their district
- the voting machine, if used (my polling place in California uses only paper ballots)
- the vote-counting machine at the precinct that scans paper ballots, tabulates the totals, and transmits them to the county
- the vote-counting machine at the county elections office that receives the data from the precincts, tabulates the totals, and transmits them to the state
- the vote-counting machine at the state elections office that receives the data from the counties, tabulates the totals, and reports them to the public
That’s a lot of places to hack into an election, and there are probably more. Depending on the security of the transmission method, it’s conceivable that even data transmission presents an attack surface.
What can we do about this? Precious little, I’m afraid.
- Double-check your registration status on the last or next-to-last day for voter registration in your state, so that you can re-register if needed.
- If you vote in person, bring your county-issued voter guide that shows your polling place and district with you.
- Bring the phone number for reporting voting irregularities in case you’re denied a ballot. Take video of any challenge to your eligibility to vote, if legal.
- Add to your already-lengthy laundry list of candidate issues, “Choose candidates who will vote to strengthen voting systems up and down the line.”
Election security may not rise to the level of health care, living wage, environmental protection, etc. on most people’s priority list, but it must be somewhere on the list if we’re going to force our elected officials to stop covering their own electoral asses and start working for us!