Georgia Election Security Safeguards

Every state has laws and rules that protect the integrity of the election process before, during, and after voting takes place. Here are some of Georgia’s key safeguards. 

Georgia has rigorous checks in place to maintain clean voter rolls and ensure that voting systems are secure and accurate. 

• As an initial protection against ineligible registrations, federal law requires that registrants provide their driver’s license number or the last four digits of their Social Security number when registering to vote for the first time.
• Federal law requires election officials to remove anyone from the voter rolls who has died, moved, or otherwise become ineligible. In Georgia, if a voter hasn’t voted or contacted election officials in five years, officials must mail them a notice requesting address confirmation or correction. If the voter doesn’t respond, their registration becomes inactive. If they do not vote or contact officials for another two general elections, they will be removed from the rolls. State law also requires the Secretary of State to receive monthly lists from local registrars of vital statistics on deaths in each county, and to remove those voters from the rolls accordingly.
• Georgia requires all voting systems to be tested by independent labs to check that they meet security standards. 
• Election officials must perform logic and accuracy tests on all voting systems and notify the public before testing for anyone who wants to observe. Logic and accuracy tests verify that voting systems are programmed to interpret voter markings and report vote totals accurately, before any voter casts a ballot.

Georgia has layers of safeguards to protect voting processes and ensure that only eligible voters can cast ballots.

• There is a paper record of every vote cast. At the polling place, voters use a touchscreen to make their choices. The machine then prints out a marked ballot that the voter can then verify and feed into a scanner for counting. When voting by mail, voters hand mark paper ballots. 
• Under Georgia state law, voters must sign their mail ballot return envelopes to affirm their eligibility under penalty of false swearing.
• Mail voters in Georgia must also provide their driver’s license number or number on their identification card.
• If a mail ballot has missing or mismatched identification information, election officials must promptly notify the voter. To ensure their ballot is counted, voters must “cure” their ballot within three days of Election Day by submitting an affidavit and identification. 
• Voters can track their mail ballot and receive notifications when their mail ballot is sent and received by the election office.

Georgia’s safeguards do not end on election night. In the weeks after polls close, election officials go through a series of checks to confirm that vote totals are complete and accurate before certifying final results.

• When polls close, Georgia requires two poll managers and two witnesses to print and sign three copies of results reports from each tabulator, showing the number of ballots cast and results.
• After ballots are initially counted, election officials review and reconcile a variety of records, including tabulator results tapes and polling place records that show the number of voters who checked in and number of ballots issued. 
• Georgia state law requires a risk-limiting audit of all federal and major statewide contests. Election workers hand count a random sample of voter-verifiable paper ballots to confirm that the outcome was correctly determined.