ATLANTA — This week, a judge is expected to release images of thousands of ballots cast in the November election. That’s in response to a lawsuit claiming irregularities in the November election.
The release will highlight a quiet shift in the level of secrecy around the ballots that drive elections – but not necessarily in a bad way.
Ballot secrecy is enshrined in the Georgia constitution. But now, there’s a decent chance the ballot voters cast can be seen in images released by Georgia counties.
When voters using the state’s Dominion ballot marking devices printed and scanned their ballots in November 2020, the scans not only tallied the votes but also preserved images of each ballot cast. That means that Georgia counties have hard drives full of the images of some 5 million ballots cast statewide.
Activists released some of those images to 11Alive News, obtained under the Georgia Open Records Act. Some ballots from Bartow County show voters who split their tickets between presidential and downballot races, while others voted straight party-line. A few skipped the downballot races altogether.
"I would love for Georgia to set the trend for this," said state Rep. Shea Roberts (D-Sandy Springs). She stressed that there is nothing on the released images that identifies any voter; only their county and precinct.
Roberts said ballot secrecy and ballot transparency are actually parallel goals that both advance the cause of democracy.
Roberts sponsored a bill this year that would have put all ballot images in Georgia online, making them accessible to anybody who wanted to see them.
SB 202, the election bill passed by Republicans in March, has language in it that could open that door a bit in a trial program.
The advantage, said Roberts, is that anybody who wants to conduct a recount could do it themselves.
"Just think about the confidence that the public could have if they could just count those images themselves," Roberts said.
Roberts’ bill – which stalled last spring—would require images of all ballots to be uploaded and posted online two days before a county can certify an election.
She’d like to see it enacted by 2022, another election sure to get a ton of scrutiny.