[A GOP incumbent governor won’t admit defeat. Elsewhere, new
voting systems underperform.] [[link removed]]
HOW THE 2019 ELECTION COULD BE A PREVIEW OF VOTING ISSUES WE MIGHT
FACE IN 2020 [[link removed]]
Steven Rosenfeld
November 6, 2019
Independent Media Institute
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_ A GOP incumbent governor won’t admit defeat. Elsewhere, new
voting systems underperform. _
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_This article was produced by __Voting Booth_
[[link removed]]_, a project of
the Independent Media Institute._
The unofficial outcomes from Tuesday’s 2019 elections are a looking
glass into what may unfold next year, especially when the results are
close and partisan Republicans won’t concede, and as new voting
equipment doesn’t perform as advertised.
The biggest contrast from Tuesday night’s results was the contrast
between what unfolded in Kentucky and Virginia. In Kentucky, the
Democratic gubernatorial challenger, state Attorney General Andy
Beshear, has a 5,100-vote lead over Republican incumbent Matt Bevin.
Not only has Bevin not conceded
[[link removed]], but he has also suggested
that foul play was involved (even though he’s yet to offer any
evidence and Republicans won every other statewide office). And a
Bevin ally, the state’s Senate president, said the legislature could
act
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to overturn the vote and reinstate Bevin.
“Tonight is just preliminary returns & KY is at beginning of the
post-voting process of canvassing & verifying returns, with
possibility of recount, etc.,” tweeted
[[link removed]] Ned Foley,
who directs Ohio State University’s Election Law program and is an
expert in post-election challenges and recounts. “But I don’t
think it’s too much to say that this is worth watching as a test of
how USA handles close race in current climate.”
In contrast, in Virginia, Democrats won by wide majorities in both
state legislative chambers, retaking the majorities in clear victories
that were unassailable. The victory gives the Democrats control of the
executive and legislative branches for the first time in 26 years
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where Democrats have pledged new gun controls, raising the state
minimum wage and other policies.
While many analysts will discuss how these outcomes were partial
referendums on a Republican Party led by Donald Trump—and by
politicians like Bevin who are cut from the same truculent
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cloth—there is another lesson for 2020. That lesson is the GOP can
only attempt to seize power by any means
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if the unofficial results are close enough to allow a litigious and
partisan fight.
“This is what worries me the most right now,” tweeted
[[link removed]] Josh
Douglas, an election law and voting rights professor at UK College of
Law. “If this does go to an election contest in KY legislature, the
legislature’s say is final. And R’s control the leg by a bunch.
But hopefully there are enough who wouldn’t go for this gambit if
there is no evidence of any issues.”
The obvious takeaway here is Democrats will need to win by very big
margins in 2020 if they want to banish the current generation of
extreme Republican leadership.
NEW VOTING SYSTEMS
There were also some eyebrow-raising incidents on Election Day as new
voting systems were deployed—including as test runs for wider use in
2020’s presidential primaries. At the same time, there was a
noticeable absence
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of reported cyber-security incidents, which suggests that efforts by
state and federal officials to strengthen election infrastructure were
working.
Two incidents—one in Georgia and another in Pennsylvania—stand out
on the new voting equipment front. Both are examples where
underperformance, owing to outsourcing technical tasks to private
contractors, impeded the voting process and undermined public
confidence, according to local news reports.
In Georgia, six counties were testing
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a new voting system to be deployed statewide in 2020’s March
primaries.
“Poll workers weren’t able to create voter access cards on new
voting check-in computers manufactured by KnowInk,” the _Atlanta
Journal-Constitution_ reported
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“Those cards activate touchscreen voting machines so that they
display the ballot associated with the jurisdictions where voters are
registered.”
In other words, these counties are using a one-computer system and
software to check in voters, who, in turn, will then move to another
computer system that will bring up their correct local ballot. These
systems, which local officials said were synced during their early
voting period, somehow didn’t coordinate on Tuesday. Poll hours were
extended to accommodate voters who were forced to wait.
“Let’s get these kinks resolved now, before March 24,” Carol
Heard, chief elections officer for Decatur County, told
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the Atlanta paper. “My hair was red before today. Now it’s
gray.”
In Pennsylvania, some counties also were experimenting with new voting
systems in advance of much wider deployments in 2020. In Northampton,
“the county’s new voting machines appear to have miscounted the
results” in a three-way local judicial race, the Allentown _Morning
Call_ reported
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in its Wednesday print edition.
The new system, an ExpressVote XL
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from Election Systems and Software (ES&S), the nation’s largest
voting machinery vendor, wasn’t counting votes accurately, the
county GOP chair said—pointing, in this case, to an actual evidence
trail. “With 105 of 155 precincts reporting, Democratic candidate
Abe Kassis had received just 164 votes. Democrat John Morganelli had
28,582 and Republican Victor Scomillio had 17,185,” _Morning Call_
reported
[[link removed]].
The ExpressVote XL has a touch screen interface used by voters, but
also prints a ballot summary card. Local election officials said they
would have to collect the paper records from every precinct and then
manually recount them. There were open questions, however, about
whether what looks like a programming error affected other races as
well.
“County Executive Lamont McClure said he believes the issues with
the machines were limited to the judicial race, but poll workers
across Northampton County flagged questionable results in at least six
other municipal races,” the _Morning Call_ reported
[[link removed]].
2020 LOOKING GLASS
These snapshots from this week’s general elections highlight two
major areas where public confidence in election outcomes may be
undermined.
In the first instance, as seen in Kentucky, a high-profile partisan
accusation of foul play was thrown out without apparent evidence. And
it was followed by the threat of a partisan power grab; having the
state’s legislature overturn an early election result to reinstall
the incumbent. In contrast, in Virginia, wide victory margins that
could not be questioned led to the much more peaceful transfer of
power in that state’s legislative majorities for the first time in a
quarter-century.
And in Pennsylvania and Georgia, technical glitches with using new
voting systems created issues that undermined confidence in the
process and reported outcomes. In Georgia, those issues were at the
front door, where voters could not get a correct local ballot. And in
Pennsylvania, the programming of new touch screen–based systems
apparently undercounted votes to such a degree that local officials
said that hand recounts would be necessary.
All of these red flags are warnings for what could blow up in 2020,
should the presidential election come down to a handful of narrow
victory margins in swing counties (such as Pennsylvania’s Lehigh
Valley) and belligerent incumbents declare that non-specified foul
play or technical irregularities were involved.
At least the November 2019 elections did not (yet) have reported
cyber-security incidents. But that, too, may change in 2020.
_Steven Rosenfeld is the editor and chief correspondent of Voting
Booth [[link removed]], a project
of the Independent Media Institute. He has reported for National
Public Radio, Marketplace, and Christian Science Monitor Radio, as
well as a wide range of progressive publications including Salon,
AlterNet, the American Prospect, and many others._
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