As usual, the Washington Post misrepresents an election story

One of the problems with Washington Post reporters is that they repeat liberals' claims as if they were fact, without challenging the claims or pointing out the obvious problems with blatantly false accusations.

That's according to a front-page story Saturday in which the Post blithely reports that “critics” of a new rule adopted by the Georgia State Board of Elections say it “would give county election officials the power to refuse to certify results without explanation, potentially preventing a result favorable to voters.”

Nothing could be further from the truth, as a simple reading of the rule passed by the five-member Georgia State Elections Board on August 19 by a vote of 3 to 2 shows.

But the Post offered no explanation for how this claim could be proven false. Given the Post's bias, we should not be surprised by its sloppy journalism.

I was one of three experts who testified in a virtual hearing before the state panel, along with former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli and Harry MacDougald, a former member of the Board of Registration and Elections in Fulton County, Georgia. When I lived in Georgia, I served on the same panel for five years, overseeing elections in the state's largest county.

If the two named Post reporters had bothered to read the written comments from Cuccinelli and me – or done some basic research – they would have quickly learned the facts. Under current Georgia law – § 21-2-493(b) – county election boards necessary to reconcile the number of votes cast by registered voters with the number of ballots counted and counted by election officials.

In other words, Georgia requires its county election boards to ensure that when 1,000 voters register at a polling place, 1,000 votes were cast and counted. If the numbers don't match — for example, if 1,000 voters registered but only 900 votes were counted — the law considers it “a discrepancy and an obvious error.”

This “obvious error” must be “investigated” by election officials. In addition, Georgia law provides that no votes from that particular polling place “shall be recorded” until the investigation has determined and corrected the source of the error.

So what happens if election officials cannot determine the reason for the “inconsistencies and obvious errors” after conducting the necessary investigations?

Paragraph (i) of the Act states that election officials “shall compute and certify the votes rightlyregardless of any fraudulent or erroneous results” (emphasis added). Therefore, even under these circumstances, election officials must do their best to “fairly” determine how many ballots must be counted before the election is certified.

It turns out that election officials in Georgia counties are only sporadically following this requirement. For this reason, Fulton County Commissioner Bridget Thorne has proposed a rule that would simply establish the procedures that election boards must follow when implementing this statutory requirement. The sworn members of these boards have a fiduciary and legal duty to follow this requirement.

I was amazed at the liberal opposition to this rule at the Georgia State Election Board hearing. The core of the opponents' position was that election officials should never conduct this type of reconciliation, which, as I said in my written testimony, is standard practice in “any type of retail and commercial establishment, such as banks, restaurants, and other stores” when they “reconcile their receipts and cash/credit.”

This common practice in the private sector “is no different from comparing the number of voters with the number of votes cast,” I told the State Election Commission.

As Thorne correctly noted when introducing the rule, it would simply “implement an existing statutory requirement that allows counties to uniformly conduct the minimum level of inspections described in the law.”

The new rule specifically states that if an error or discrepancy “cannot be properly corrected” after the required investigation, election officials “will establish a method for calculating the votes rightly as required by applicable law. The “correct or corrected returns must be recorded” and the “consolidated returns must then be certified” by the date required by Georgia law.

This rule is not “illegal,” as critics falsely claim. Nor would it delay certification, as critics claim and as the Washington Post reported.

But why should one bother to read a short law when one can simply parrot the arguments of the left?

Contrary to headlines in the Washington Post and elsewhere claiming that Georgia's new rule raises “fears of election tampering,” this rule will help ensure that the votes of all registered, eligible voters are counted and not invalidated due to errors, mistakes, omissions or outright voter fraud.

In other words, the regulation will help prevent eligible, registered voters from being de facto deprived of their right to vote.

Contrary to the misleading claim that the election will be used to “thwart a popular outcome,” election officials will use it to guarantee that the “popular outcome” actually corresponds to the declared election result.

Kudos to the majority of the Georgia State Board of Elections for standing up for election integrity and ensuring that election officials at the state and local levels actually follow the law.