5 reasons it’s hard to rig an election in Georgia
1. Each of Georgia's 27,000 electronic voting machines never connect to each other or the internet. Votes are saved to memory cards, driven to county election offices and then loaded to a tabulation computer.
2. Hackers would have to infiltrate one voting machine at a time, in person, without getting caught by election workers.
3. Trying to vote multiple times or add extra votes wouldn't work. Precinct workers verify vote counts by matching up the number of votes recorded by voting machines, the electronic list of voters and the paper certificates voters fill out when they arrive.
4. Georgia voters must show either a driver’s license or an official ID before they can cast their ballots at precincts.
5. Each voting machine copies results to a memory card and to an internal hard drive. After polls close, each precinct posts results on a wall or window for public viewing before they're again counted at county election offices. Results posted to the Georgia Secretary of State's website are unofficial reports from counties.
About the Author
Mark Niesse is an enterprise reporter and covers elections and Georgia government for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and is considered an expert on elections and voting. Before joining the AJC, he worked for The Associated Press in Atlanta, Honolulu and Montgomery, Alabama. He also reported for The Daily Report and The Santiago Times in Chile.
