MONITOR

Voting Rights Are Being Threatened More Than We Realize

How hand-marked paper ballots in Georgia can help reduce minority voter suppression

Photo: Jessica McGowan/Getty Images

On the first day of the hearing in Curling v. Raffensperger, in the United States District Court of the Northern District of Georgia, state Rep. Jasmine Clark takes the witness stand. Clark testifies that during the July 2018 primary runoff election, poll workers at Lucky Shoals, a polling site in minority-majority Gwinnett County, tried to prevent her from voting because her name did not appear in the electronic polling book.

The plaintiffs in Curling, one of the most important election security cases in the country, contend that Georgia’s use of insufficiently secure DREs violates voters’ rights to due process under the 14th Amendment.

After calling a voter protection hotline for assistance, Clark, who is Black, was finally allowed to cast her ballot on one of the site’s touch screen direct-recording electronic (DRE) voting machines. But the experience made her wonder how many other voters, especially minority voters, were turned away from polling places because of the state’s unreliable electronic voting equipment.

The plaintiffs in Curling, one of the most important election security cases in the country, contend that Georgia’s use of insufficiently secure DREs violates voters’ rights to due process under the 14th Amendment. Among other relief, plaintiffs seek paper polling book backups for electronic poll books, and the implementation of a hand-marked paper ballot system, where voters use pens to mark their choices on paper ballots in a manner similar to how students fill out Scantrons for standardized testing.

Virtually all election integrity experts agree that hand-marked paper ballots are the gold standard for election systems because they are verifiable (voters can see for themselves that their selections reflect their intentions), auditable (the ballots can be stored and examined later for accuracy), and unhackable (voting data can’t easily be breached or altered.)