In the runup for election day in Georgia, Gabriel Sterling tries to prevent all possible scenarios that could disturb the voice of his state.
Sterling is Chief Operating Officer of the Foreign Minister of Georgia Brad Raffensperger, whose office carries out elections in Georgia, a battlefield state that is preparing for a very narrow election day.
In 2021, the then President Donald Trump Raffensperger, a Republican, described and tried to make him change the results of the 2020 presidential election in the state. Raffensperger declined. Later, both Raffensperger and Sterling told the House Committee on January 6 and a large jury in Georgia about the 2020 elections.
Today, elections are still used to use exposed conspiracy theories to question the legitimacy of the 2020 elections, and the officials hope to ward off all suspicion of this year's competition.
In the 60 minutes of this week, the correspondent Scott Pelley spoke to Sterling to see how Georgia's officials are preparing for this year's elections – both when protecting the ballot and in the insurance of the people that the race in the Peach state is fair.
Safety measures in the surveys
One of Sterling's priorities for election day is to keep the surveys safe for both voters and survey.
He said Pelley that his office works with local law enforcement authorities throughout the state to centralize the security efforts and make plans for various election day scenarios.
In the event of a measure that disturbs the surveys – like a person who threatens an election worker or someone who threatens a voter with a weapon – Verbally attacks Georgia in an SMS tool for every district who wants to choose. With a text, A The survey worker can immediately reach the district elections Director, the state election manager and the local law enforcement authorities.
In the war area of the election day in Georgia, all agencies that may need to be asked to keep the coordination up. This includes the state equivalent of the FBI and Georgia as well as the companies responsible for gas, electricity and trains in the state.
“We really have to think about everything you can imagine,” said Sterling. “A tree falls over and strikes the power somewhere? We have to work quickly to do it because one of these things can then turn into a conspiracy theory, as we have learned again and again.”
Secure the ballot paper
After Sterling had explained how Georgia planned the survey workers and voters, Sterling went through Georgia's approach for 60 minutes to secure his ballot papers.
In the surveys, Georgia voters must first show their ID. You bring it to an election worker who denotes a check-in device called “Electoral Cushion”. If the voters have no driver's license, you can use another state ID. The barcode on the back of the ID raises your information in the state roller roles and assures that you can legally hand in a ballot.
As soon as the ID has been scanned, a voter signs the electoral pillow and the election worker signs to check whether you have experienced the signature of the voter. The election worker then encodes the corresponding ballot paper for the district of the voter on a green voter card with which the ballot marker or BMD is accessed.
Although each of the 159 counties in Georgia has their own election team, the ballot papers are prepared and encoded for each resident by the State Secretary of the State Secretary.
After the voter has inserted the green voter card into the device and selected its desired candidates, the machine prints a paper copy of your ballot paper, which exactly indicated, and asked the voter to confirm your selection.
From there, the paper list goes into a scanner that takes up a picture of the ballot and records the number of scanned ballot papers.
Sterling said 60 minutes that paper copy is an important step.
“You want to have a checkable way,” he said. “When the memory cards are damaged, we lose everything that happens to them [BMDs]We can compare the paper documents with the results that have emerged from all machines to ensure that it is done correctly. “
Paul Petruska, a trained election helper in Georgia, said that redundancy in this process shows the integrity of the state voting system.
“They have three different areas that count,” he said to 60 minutes. “All three are completely separated from each other.”
The survey cushions, said Petruska, have data from the state registrar of the WHO election authorization and cannot be changed at the local level. These devices begin the number of voters.
Next, the electoral marking devices, which are independent of the electoral pillows, pay the number of voters and record their selection. Finally, the scanner, who photographs the paper lists, also counts the number of ballot papers inserted. All three devices count regardless of the number of votes recorded and the numbers can be compared.
In order to further protect the ballot paper, coordination devices and scanners are not connected to the Internet and cannot be hacked, Sterling said 60 minutes.
Each machine has two memory cards in which the voting results are downloaded. The first memory card is brought to the headquarters of the respective district by two election workers. There the results are put into another offline machine that matches the voices. These results are then downloaded to a separate memory stick and put into a computer that is directly connected to the state's electoral system, where the votes are publicly published by the State Secretary.
The second memory card, together with the paper voices found in the scanner, is brought to the headquarters of the local choice by a strict custody chain.
If people still doubt that voices can be changed or added, the survey worker Petruska pointed out the number of hand. After the election, the election workers occupy a percentage of the specific races and count the selection of voters, as they are reflected in the paper voting notes to check whether the number corresponds to the record from the ballot marking devices.
“There is no way to prepare the system. You cannot stuff balls of the ballot,” said Petruska. “You cannot bring people to the registrar who are not there. It is just all wrong. It is someone who is on a soap box who wants to frighten people, use fear tactics. And we are here to make sure that that doesn't work. ”
The video above was produced by Brit McCandless Farmer and published by Scott Rosann.
Brit McCandless Farmer
