Judge orders Georgia to switch to paper ballots for 2020 elections

Enlarge / An election official holds an electronic voting machine memory card following the Georgia primary runoff elections at a polling location in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S., on Tuesday, July 24, 2018. (credit: Elijah Nouvelage/Bloomberg via Getty Images) Election security advocates scored a major victory on Thursday as a federal judge issued a 153-page ruling ordering Georgia officials to stop using its outdated electronic voting machines by the end of the year. The judge accepted the state’s argument that it would be too disruptive to switch to paper ballots for municipal elections being held in November 2019. But she refused to extend that logic into 2020, concluding that the state had plenty of time to phase out its outdated touchscreen machines before then. The state of Georgia was already planning to phase out its ancient touchscreen electronic voting machines in favor of a new system based on ballot-marking machines. Georgia hopes to have the new machines in place in time for a presidential primary election in March 2020. In principle, that switch should address many of the critics’ concerns. The danger, security advocates said, was that the schedule could slip and Georgia could then fall back on its old, insecure electronic machines in the March primary and possibly in the November 2020 general election as well. The new ruling by Judge Amy Totenberg slams the door shut on that possibility. If Georgia isn’t able to switch to its new high-tech system, it will be required to fall back on a low-tech system of paper ballots rather than continue using the insecure and buggy machines it has used for well more than a decade. Read 24 remaining paragraphs | Comments Source: https://ift.tt/2NaY0Fo Droolin’ Dog sniffed out this story and shared it with you. The Article Was Written/Published By: Timothy B. Lee ! #Headlines, #Election2020, #politics, #TechNews, #Newsfeed, #syndicated, news https://ift.tt/308nEhR
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