Thread by @jennycohn1

The findings of @GASecofState’s secret study of Georgia’s controversial new touchscreen voting machines (BMDs) are similar to a 2004 study of DRE’s with so-called Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trails (VVPATs), which are now widely disfavored due 2 concerns about verifiability. 1/

https://twitter.com/markniesse/status/1420077595803144193

Screenshot re the 2004 VVPAT study. 2/ usenix.org/legacy/events/…

.@GaSecofState’s study didn’t even reach the question of what percent of voters will be able to notice and report inaccuracies caused by the BMDs in marking their “paper ballots” for them. But other studies of VVPATS and BMDs suggest the percent is unacceptably low. 3/

4/ In a 2005 MIT study of DREs w/ VVPATs, “Out of 108 elections that contained errors [VVPAT not matching a test voter’s selection], … NO ERRORS WERE REPORTED [by the test voters].”ted.selker.com/documents/resu…

5/ A study last year by the University of Michigan showed that voters reported only 7% of inaccuracies on their “paper ballot” caused by a BMD (new touchscreen voting machine) in marking it for the voter. news.engin.umich.edu/2020/01/new-st…

6/ The question remains why @GaSecofState & @GabrielSterling have (1) refused to give in person voters the choice to mark their ballots by hand w/ a pen & (2) failed to educate voters to bring & use their completed sample ballots to verify BMD-marked paper ballots.

7/ Why was I the only one providing this advice? @GaSecofState was as aware of the Michigan study as I was.

8/ The question also remains why @GASecOfState & @GabrielSterling ignored the earlier VVPAT studies & bought BMDs based on mere hopes & prayers that BMDs wld be better than VVPATs. Why didn’t they study BMDs BEFORE buying them (or wait for others to conduct those studies)?!#gapol

9/ Finally, it is totally on brand that @GaSecofState failed to release the results of its study. We know about the study only due to a public records request by @markniesse. So much for transparency.

10/ And what about the lines? Everyone knows that BMDs (like DREs) limit the number of people who can fill out their ballots concurrently to the number of working BMDs at the polling place, a recipe for long lines.

11/ The lines in Georgia were atrocious in 2020 despite a huge number of voters using vote by mail due to the pandemic and concerns about long lines. With Georgia cracking down on vote by mail, we can expect even worse lines in the future. This is unnecessary & unacceptable.