The results of Cobb County’s public referendum on a Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax were thrown into question after new electronic voting machine software proved unreliable last September.

The "upgraded" software, installed on the county’s hundreds of voting machines prior to the special election, was plagued by technical problems during the modem transmission of vote data, delaying transmission of precinct results to the central Cobb Board of Elections offices in Marietta. At precincts with the worst software problems, poll workers had to drive to the central elections office and hand-deliver the results because electronic transmission failed, further compromising vote security.

Delays in the electronic transmission of voting data were not the only problem that surfaced during Cobb’s tax referendum last September. When all the results were finally tallied, the final count showed that 285 ballots were completely blank. Either those 285 citizens decided not to cast a vote when they arrived at the polls that day – an unlikely scenario in a special election – or, they were effectively disenfranchised by voting machine malfunctions. Those 285 “lost” votes were certainly significant in a referendum in which the margin of victory was less than half that number.

These types of electronic voting machine snafus are more common in Georgia than the general public is aware. Implementation of a voter verifiable paper audit trail for all of our touch screen voting machines would give Georgia citizens the power to audit their votes in real time and would provide a secure paper record of every vote cast when the next “Cobb County” incident occurs.

Please note that my paper audit-trail legislation, SB 500, the 2006 Georgia Accuracy in Elections Act, is the third bill on the Senate’s calendar to be heard this morning, Monday, March 6 (session began at 10:00 a.m.).

In an ongoing effort to spotlight the importance of election reform and ballot security in Georgia, I have created this series of weekly email alerts called the "Voter Outrage of the Week." Each week, I will highlight a different shocking example of voter fraud and how it relates to our election reform efforts here in Georgia. I hope you find these messages both informative and revealing.

Senator Bill Stephens is running for Secretary of State. He is the incumbent Senator from the 27th District, the former Senate Majority Leader, and previously served as Governor Perdue’s Administration Floor Leader and as Chairman of the Senate Republican Caucus. Senator Stephens may be reached via e-mail at Bill.Stephens@BillStephens.com, or visit his website, www.BillStephens.com.