Atlanta Progressive News

With additional reporting by Jonathan Springston.

(APN) ATLANTA — Councilwoman Mary Norwood has said that she will seek a recount after Tuesday’s Mayoral Run-off Election in which former State Sen. Kasim Reed is currently leading by 620 votes. Reed currently leads Norwood with 42,348 to 41,728.

Reed on the other hand has already declared victory and is calling himself Mayor-elect.

As a result of the December 01, 2009, Run-off Election, Ceasar Mitchell has been elected City Council President; Aaron Watson has been elected to the Post 2-at-large seat; and Alex Wan has been elected to District 6. In addition, Donzella James has been re-elected to the State Senate and Simone Bell has been elected to State House, in two notable Special Elections. Check back with Atlanta Progressive News tomorrow for our coverage on these other races.

Several weeks ago at a fundraiser in Buckhead’s Tuxedo Park neighborhood, Norwood supporters asked her whether she had confidence in a fair election, and she said that she believed Secretary of State Karen Handel would do everything in her power to ensure the election is fair.

However, aside from a few potential areas listed below, there typically has not been much for a candidate to gain from a recount under E-voting. And in addition, there is not much Handel can do to ensure the accuracy of the E-voting totals in this or any election, being that there is no voter-verified paper trail.

As previously reported by Atlanta Progressive News in our coverage of the VoterGA lawsuit against the current E-voting system in Georgia, election officials have already testified that a recount on E-voting machines has never produced a different result in the machines’ seven year history.

More on the recount issues (below) following our coverage of election night.

ELECTION NIGHT

Norwood and her supporters gathered at the Varsity fast food restaurant in Midtown to watch the election results come in. At first, the numbers being reported by WXIA Channel 11 showed Norwood leading. She held her first press availability around 9pm.

When asked why she thought she was leading, “Everybody has their Mary story. It’s been 20 years. I didn’t know this would be my life’s work but it is.”

However, while the Channel 11 numbers showed Norwood in the lead with as much as 50% of the precincts in, the Fulton County website was showing Reed in a major lead with only a few precincts in.

Reed and his supporters gathered at the Hyatt Regency hotel in downtown Atlanta. After the polls closed at 8 p.m., supporters began filling a ballroom inside.

The crowd included a large union contingent and countless lawmakers – two groups that were key to Reed’s late-campaign push into the run-off.

State Sen. Nan Orrock led a parade of elected officials on stage after 10 p.m. “Atlanta needs a consensus builder,” she said.  “Atlanta needs someone who can bring people together. [Reed] can put together the people and work to get things done.”

Joining Orrock were Fulton County Commissioner Nancy Boxill, Clayton County Commission Chairman Eldrin Bell, DeKalb County Commissioner Lee May, and State Reps. Ed Mangham, Rahn Mayo, Kathy Ashe, and Pat Gardner. A group of labor representatives also took the stage.

Around 11 p.m., all 170 precincts had reported, with Reed leading by just a few hundred votes.

“The numbers change by the second, so I’m told we’re in a dead heat,” Norwood said at the Varsity at 11pm. “It’s too close to call. I’m very hopeful we will prevail. However, we may not prevail. If not I wish the new Mayor well wishes. I will continue to work for Atlanta.”

“It’s been a great two years. I’m so grateful to everybody in this room. It’s been a great campaign. It’s closer than any of us thought. It’s been a harder campaign than any of us thought. But it’s all been for you,” Norwood said.

When asked by Fox Channel 5 if having half as much money raised in the last month as Reed has hindered her campaign, Norwood said she didn’t think throwing more money at it would have helped. Norwood implied the political machine and negative campaigning by Reed was more formidable. “Look at what we were up against. A lot, you guys. We were the candidate for the people.”

“If it’s so close that a recount is warranted, absolutely,” she would request one, Norwood said.

With 50.4 percent of the vote under his belt, Reed took the stage, flanked by campaign staff and supporters, to declare victory at midnght.

“We started this journey together 18 months ago,” he said. “Not many people knew me but you know what I like to say – I love Atlanta.”

While Norwood has not conceded the election, Reed’s statement signaled he is ready to start the reconciliation process.

“I ask you to join hands with me as we move forward together to heal this city,” he said. “It is my hope that after [the Norwood campaign] goes through what they want to go through, we can unite and put this city back together.”

While Reed delivered his victory speech, there were numerous reports that officials had not finished counting provisional and absentee ballots. Voters who were given a provisional ballot have until Thursday, December 03, 2009, to go to the Fulton County Government Center or a similar office in Dekalb, to show proper ID.

If after the provisional ballots are counted, Norwood remains under 1 percent behind Reed, then State law gives her the right to request a recount no later than two days after the vote is certified, which is expected to happen Saturday. In that case, Norwood would have until Monday.

RECOUNT ISSUES

The recount is problematic because Georgia has established two different sets of recount procedures: one for absentee ballots and provisional ballots, which are on paper, and another for early voting and election day voting, which are electronic.

As for the absentee ballots and provisional ballots, there is a greater likelihood that a recount of those could result in a different overall vote total than a recount of the E-votes.

“I don’t know Mary that well, but I think she’s a little naive,” Garland Favorito of VoterGA, the elections integrity group which challenged E-voting in court, told APN.

With E-voting, “all they’re gonna do is re-accumulate the PCMCIA cards and just reprint the same results we had before. The reaccumulation is always going to provide the same totals as Cobb and Williams [two state experts who testified in the VoterGA lawsuit] have already explained.”

As previously reported by APN, there is no way to know in any election whether the electronic totals reported by the E-voting machines match the individual ballot selections made by voters and there is no voter-verifiable paper audit trail in the case of a recount.

With the absentee and provisional ballots, on the other hand, “they are rescanned. The actual ballot that the voter verified and handed over to the election officials is rescanned and recounted from scratch.”

That being said, there are still some possibilities where problems could be detected in a recount of the E-votes.

First, Favorito said there could be differences between what an individual precinct reports to the county, and what the county lists as that precinct’s total.

“You could have an error in going from the precinct to the counties because the precinct managers are not required to ensure their vote totals got entered and added in the county totals correctly. The county totals can be altered without detection,” Favorito said.

To address this in a recount, “they need to verify that every precinct vote total that’s reported in the county results is correct back to the precinct, that it matches the precinct results that were reported by the precinct. That’s a very good check to make. That’s one of the best things a candidate and his [sic] supporters can do,” Favorito said.

“The county totals can be altered with no audit trail produced. In other words, a county election official could manipulate the results without detection, and this was admitted to by Diebold in a California case which led to their decertification for the third time and a settlement,” Favorito said.

“There could be problems in the modem transferring the votes. Or if you had a county official that didn’t like the results, they could just change it for any precinct and there would be no audit trail of their action,” Favorito said.

Second, Favorito said that candidates in a recount can check the voter rolls against the reported vote totals to make sure there is no over-vote or under-vote. There have been numerous cases around the US where it has been found that there are precincts with more votes than voters who signed in, or fewer votes than voters who signed in.

Why would machines have more votes than voters?

“The voting machines have a defect that allows test votes to be incorporated into live election results. This has been a known defect since the 2002 Gubernatorial election and it happened recently in Lowndes County, Georgia, where 947 test votes were included in the election results,” Favorito said.

“When the logic and accuracy testing is performed, the machine must be put in pre-test mode and any votes cast on a card should be identified as test votes. Therefore, when the election results are accumulated, the voting machines should be smart enough to look and identify any test votes on the memory card and exclude them or notify the officials that test votes were on the card. But the machines were not smart enough to do that and I consider that a defect,” Favorito said.

Favorito said the Elections Superintendent is required to make sure the number of voters logged in the poll books matches the number of votes recorded by the E-voting machines.

“That is required. But they did not do that in Lowndes County. It’s standard procedure for it to happen, but it’s always good to double check behind the officials,” Favorito said.

Why would machines have fewer votes than voters? “The machines allow negative votes,” Favorito said.

Meanwhile, some Norwood supporters have raised concern regarding disproportionately high turnout at a Ralph Bunche Middle School, where the latest reports show he received 1,483 votes, even though in all of the surrounding precincts he had under a thousand votes, usually about a few hundred.

About the author:

Matthew Cardinale is the News Editor for Atlanta Progressive News and is reachable at matthew@atlantaprogressivenews.com. Jonathan Springston is a Senior Staff Writer for Atlanta Progressive News and is reachable at jonathan@atlantaprogressivenews.com.

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