May 19, 2023
Atlanta – Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s Division of Elections announced the plan and schedule for security preparations for the upcoming presidential election year in a phone call with county election officials.
Blake Evans, Georgia’s elections director, said on the call: “I don’t believe there is a more proven voting system in the country than the one we have in Georgia. After a close presidential election in 2020, we passed every test, including a manual audit and a full recount. And it also passed all tests in high-profile elections in 2022.” He said this while informing counties that the state will conduct system security “health checks” in all 159 counties.
The system health audit examines election management systems, ballot marking devices and scanners. This includes checking HASH values to ensure that the software has not been changed and Democracy Suite remains 5.5A. The HASH values should match the original value when the software and hardware were accepted by the state.
Mr. Evans also announced that Secretary Raffensperger’s office is coordinating with the Department of Homeland Security to conduct physical site security assessments of the storage and housing of all election equipment in each county.
The office also announced that there will be pilot versions of the recently certified Election Assistance Commission version of Democracy Suite, 5.17, in 2023. This software has not yet been used in any election in any jurisdiction. Pilots will examine full functionality in a real-world environment. In addition, as part of the review of the processes, an update of the almost 45,000 voting machines and the subsequent acceptance test are required. This process will take tens of thousands of hours of work. Therefore, the statewide change to 5.17 will occur after the 2024 election cycle. This will allow the state and counties to focus on running local elections and running the presidential election cycle. It also allows the state to create a thoughtful and thorough plan for rolling out the latest software.
“Election deniers and those with similar claims in court may want us to move irresponsibly more quickly to effect this change,” Raffensperger said. “However, I have told our team that we will proceed responsibly, consciously and maturely, putting the needs of voters and our poll workers first. I am an engineer. To build a solid structure, you need a strong, well-laid foundation. That’s what this plan does.”
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Georgia is recognized as the national leader in elections. It was the first state in the country to adopt triple automatic voter registration, at least 17 days of early voting (dubbed the “gold standard”) and no-excuse absentee voting. Georgia continues to set records for voter turnout and turnout, posting the largest increase in average voter turnout of any other state in the 2018 midterm elections, as well as record turnout in 2020 and 2022. 2022 marked the highest early voting turnout in a single day in Georgia’s midterm election history using Georgia’s secure paper voting system. Most recently, Georgia ranked first for election integrity by the Heritage Foundation, top for voter accessibility by the Center for Election Innovation & Research, and first for election administration by the Bipartisan Policy Center.
