August 14, 2024
Letter of Support - GA Election Board Proposed Rule 183-1-12-12
August 14, 2024
The State Election Board
2 MLK Jr. Drive
Suite 802 Floyd West Tower
Atlanta, GA 30334
Re: Support for proposed rule 183-1-12-.12
Dear Chairman Fervier and members of the Board,
My name is Ken Blackwell and I am the Chair of the Center for Election Integrity at the America First Policy Institute (AFPI) and the former Secretary of State in Ohio. I have spent much of my career working to ensure that Americans are guaranteed safe, secure, and transparent elections that are accountable to the people and not corrupted by outside forces. Raising American confidence in our elections is a critical piece of this mission.
As the body responsible for implementing election integrity measures in Georgia, you have the task of ensuring that Georgia’s elections are safe, secure, transparent, and accountable. The proposed rule 183-1-12-.12 would establish standard procedures for counties to comply with the existing requirement that mandates reconciliation of any discrepancies between numbers of voters, numbers of ballots, and numbers of votes, before certifying election results. This is already required under Georgia law (GA Code § 21-2-493[b]) the proposed rule simply standardizes the implementation.
An AFPI report on the 2020 election identified thousands of these exact discrepancies in Georgia alone that were never reconciled prior to election certification. Moving forward, we want to ensure that should a scenario like this arise again, the law is followed uniformly and correctly across all Georgia counties. The number of voters, number of ballots, and number of votes should all be the same—this is just commonsense. Any opposition to this proposed rule is suspicious in nature, as it opposes the simple principle of one voter, casting one vote, at one time, counted once.
Georgians need to know that their vote counts, and their vote matters. They need to trust their elections. I encourage you to support the proposed rule 183-1-12-.12 at your upcoming meeting.
Sincerely,
The Hon. J. Kenneth Blackwell
Chair, Center for Election Integrity
America First Policy Institute