Politics

Faulty software or poorly calibrated vote-tabulation scanners used to count mailed-in ballots in this week’s chaotic Georgia primary may have prevented thousands of votes from being counted, election officials and voting integrity activists said.

The issue was identified in at least four counties, DeKalb, Morgan, Clarke and Cherokee, according to officials who discovered them, including activists who have sued the state for alleged election mismanagement.

“The fact that it is in multiple counties tells me that it’s probably systemic,” said Richard DeMillo, a Georgia Tech computer scientist who has testified for the plaintiffs, because identical scanners and software were used to count all absentee ballots across the state. DeMillo said the only way to know for sure is through audits.

A top Georgia voting official, voting implementation manager Gabriel Sterling, said Friday that he had seen no evidence yet of the issue and found it difficult to believe the reports were “an active description of what is happening on the ground.”

“These are activists who have an ax to grind,” he said.

Nearly 1.1 million Georgians voted by mail for Tuesday’s primary, which had been delayed twice due to the coronavirus pandemic.

In-person voting Tuesday was beset by cascading failures. Voters waited up to five hours to cast ballots at some polling places due to equipment problems, poll worker unfamiliarity with a new voting system and social distancing measures taken because of the virus. Many voters also showed up to vote in person because absentee ballots they requested never arrived by mail.

People vote at voting booths in the Georgia’s primary electin at Park Tavern on June 9, 2020, in Atlanta.

Reading Time: 3 minutesWASHINGTON (Reuters) – Voters encountered long lines and problems with voting machines on Tuesday during a chaotic day of in-person balloting in Georgia, the latest state to struggle to conduct elections amid the health worries of the coronavirus pandemic.
State Republicans and Democrats blamed each other for the difficulties, and Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said his office would investigate problems in two counties that are Democratic strongholds in an effort to resolve the issues before the November general election.
The missteps in Georgia, which had delayed its primary from March, are likely to raise alarms about how well states will handle voting if the coronavirus is still raging when Republican President Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden meet in the Nov. 3 presidential election.
Many voters complained of hours-long waits and voting machines that were not operating. Raffensperger said the problems were most acute in metropolitan Atlanta’s Fulton and DeKalb counties, although the Georgia Democratic Party said it received reports of problems “in every corner of the state.”
The primary was the first use of Georgia’s new voting equipment, which added a paper ballot backup, and officials said there were reports some locations struggled to start the machines, did not receive the equipment necessary to start on time or did not train poll workers properly on handling them.
“I waited for three hours,” said Callie Orsini, 26, who stood in line with hundreds of people in Atlanta’s Midtown neighborhood on Tuesday. She said some people in line had requested absentee ballots but had not received them, and it took longer for poll workers to process them.

Georgia which pursues integration into Western political, economic and military unions has an interesting historical background of encouraging peaceful co-existence among its Christian and non-Christian subjects during the Middle Ages.

Facebook deleted a campaign ad from a GOP candidate in Georgia because she was brandishing a gun in the political commercial.
Marjorie Greene is running in Georgia’s 14th District, and she already grabbed attention with a campaign ad where she warns Antifa to stay out of Georgia. In the ad, Greene is standing on the porch of a local business, and she is armed with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle.
“I have a message for Antifa terrorists,” Greene says. “Stay the hell out of Northwest Georgia.”
“You won’t burn our churches, loot our businesses or destroy our homes,” Greene tells Antifa.
Greene posted the campaign ad on Tuesday, but it was deleted by Facebook on Thursday. Facebook told Greene’s campaign that the ad was pulled because it violated the company’s policies against promoting the use of firearms.
Facebook sent an email to Greene’s campaign that said ads “must not promote the sale or use of weapons, ammunition, or explosives.” Ads are also prohibited from “promoting the brandishing of firearms.”
“Facebook lets Antifa organize terrorist attacks on America and allows videos of innocent Americans being brutally attacked, but pulls my post down,” she told Fox News. “America is a country of law and order — not anarchy. Telling Antifa thugs to stay out of northwest Georgia is not a violation of Facebook.”
“Big Tech censorship of conservatives must end,” Greene said.
“We removed this ad, which advocates the use of deadly weapons against a clearly defined group of people, for violating our policies against inciting violence,” Facebook said in a statement to Fox News.

Armed female Black Panther leads her comrades including a white recruit on a march through Georgia

• New Black Panthers were spotted at Black Lives Matter protests in Georgia
• The were seen carrying guns while marching arm-in-arm with protesters
• The New Black Panthers were seen at protests in Atlanta and Decatur this week
• They were peaceful and talked about ‘love and respect’ during the marches 

Earlier in the week, many of the same people were spotted carrying guns at a protest in Decatur, Georgia. 

There, on June 3, they also marched arm-in-arm alongside protesters and addressed the crowd as part of their efforts to protect the rights of the demonstrators, according to Decaturish.  

The organization – founded in 1989 and distinct from the original Black Panthers – has engaged in armed protests against alleged police brutality, but its Atlanta chapter did not have a hand in organizing this particular grassroots protest, which was put together by a Georgia State University student.  

Decaturish reported that protesters at the march had expressed concern about their presence.  

The Southern Poverty Law Center and Anti-Defamation League have both categorized the New Black Panthers as a hate group. 

“The bad news is we are not seeing a reduction in transmission, but I don’t see a spike in transmission,” said Dr. Gerardo Chowell, professor of mathematical epidemiology at Georgia State University’s School of Public Health. Data from the Georgia Department of Health shows that the seven-day moving average of coronavirus cases steadily declined from late April until mid-May, a reflection of the earlier stay-at-home order. The moving average of cases then flattened at just over 500 new cases per day, and the totals have risen slightly since May 12.

Last month, after weeks of stay-at-home orders, Georgia allowed businesses like gyms, hair and nail salons and restaurants to reopen with certain restrictions in an attempt to restart its economy. Georgia was the first state to move so aggressively to reopen its economy and as such has come to represent the broader reopening movement.

So far, that fear has not been borne out. The preliminary data suggests that reopening has not led to a spike in cases — but the virus has continued to steadily infect people and shows no signs of waning.

“I’m proud of what we accomplished over the last several weeks, but we cannot rest on our laurels,” Republican Gov. Brian Kemp said last week. “We need to further expand access to testing and we need to encourage Georgians to make it a priority.”

by Jason Schaumburg
 
After President Donald Trump took to Twitter to threaten pulling the Republican National Convention out of Charlotte, N.C, other southeast states with Trump allies as governor have offered to host the convention.
The GOP convention is scheduled for late August in Charlotte. North Carolina entered phase two of its reopening plan amid the coronavirus pandemic last week under Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, who has been cautious in lifting restrictions.
“I love the Great State of North Carolina, so much so that I insisted on having the Republican National Convention in Charlotte at the end of August,” Trump tweeted Monday. “Unfortunately, Democrat Governor, @RoyCooperNC is still in Shutdown mood & unable to guarantee that by August we will be allowed full attendance in the Arena.”

I love the Great State of North Carolina, so much so that I insisted on having the Republican National Convention in Charlotte at the end of August. Unfortunately, Democrat Governor, @RoyCooperNC is still in Shutdown mood & unable to guarantee that by August we will be allowed…
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 25, 2020

Trump’s four-tweet thread went on to say that without an immediate answer about attendance, the Republican Party will be forced to find a new location.
Enter Florida and Georgia.
A little more than four hours later Monday morning, Republican Party of Florida Chairman and state Sen. Joe Gruters responded.
“America’s #1 Governor @GovRonDeSantis and the state of Florida would welcome @realDonaldTrump and the 2020 convention with open arms,” Gruters tweeted. “Florida is open for business. @FloridaGOP”

Two out of five people in Georgia — 40.3 percent of its workforce — have filed for unemployment since the state reopened its economy on April 30, the first to do so. But people are still staying close to home, making it harder for jobs to come back, according to a report in Politico on Thursday (May 21).

Georgia had more filings by percentage of its workforce than any other state, Politico’s review of data indicated. New jobless claims for loans in Georgia have varied since the state reopened, going up 243,000 two weeks ago and dropping to 177,000 last week. The state had commented that the increases in claims were due to jobs lost in retail, social services and health care.

“It’s nothing significant enough to say, ‘Oh, there’s a huge surge,’ — but certainly nothing to signal there’s any return to economic stability or recovery happening right now,” Alex Camardelle, a senior policy analyst with the nonprofit Georgia Budget and Policy Institute, told Politico.

Aside from being the first state to re-open, Georgia was also one of the last states to close its economy and impose stay-home mandates.

More layoffs are coming down the pike in Georgia as the state makes plans to eliminate over 1,000 jobs — educators, counselors, social services, administrators, clerks —  in a move to cut state budgets by 14 percent, according to an AJC report on Sunday (May 24). Revenue decline brought about by the pandemic was cited as the reason.

Further, some state employees not laid off will see their paychecks slashed.

Among the departments laying off or furloughing employees are the Georgia State Patrol and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

Welcome to Good Day, UGA, your one-stop shop for Georgia football news and takes. Check us out every weekday morning for everything you need to know about Georgia football, recruiting, basketball and more.
A deeper dive into Georgia football recruiting efforts in the metro Atlanta area
Since Kirby Smart took over as Georgia’s head coach in December of 2015 and including the 2021 class, the state of Georgia has produced 202 blue-chip recruits, which are defined as 4 or 5-star prospects using the 247Sports Composite database.
Of those recruits, 118 —58 percent — of them have come from nine counties that make up the metro Atlanta area, defined as the counties of Fulton, Gwinnett, Cobb, DeKalb, Clayton, Coweta, Douglas, Fayette and Henry per the Georgia State of Tourism website. 
On average the metro Atlanta area produces more blue-chip recruits than the likes of Alabama, Louisiana and Ohio. Alvin Kamara, Derrick Brown and the Atlanta Falcons’ 2020 first-round pick AJ Terrell all came from the area. It is one of the best recruiting areas in the country from both a high-end and volume standpoint.
But in recent seasons Georgia is relying less and less on the Atlanta area to add to its recruiting haul, even as it continues to sign elite recruiting classes. In the 2019 and 2020 cycles, Georgia signed just five prospects from the area and just one of the 10 5-star prospects. Over that same time span, Clemson and Tennessee have also signed five prospects with Alabama landing six.
So should Georgia be doing a better job recruiting the metro Atlanta area, or is it just too unrealistic to expect one school to dominate the area? Does Georgia need to re-prioritize how it recruits the area?

President Akufo-Addo set up the “National Covid-19 Trust Fund” to mobilise res towards the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.