 To my left is Christopher Bruce. He's the political director of the ACLU of Georgia, and I've had the pleasure of knowing Chris since my work at the Capitol and some of the work that we've done together. You've probably seen Bruce here before in Athens. He has been here doing certain sessions for AADM. He is a leader in the fight for civil rights and liberties across the state and country. He led a campaign against suppressing the black vote in South Atlanta by preventing the closure of polling locations in majority black districts during the 2016 majorial election. Please help me welcome Christopher Bruce. Thank you. Thank you. I normally start off these talks by saying, first off, good evening. Good evening. Right, it's more of a call and response. How many members of the ACLU are in this audience? So you raise your hand real fast. That is a great amount. Thank you for raising your hand. And the reason why I asked that question is the same reason why I'm here. Athens-Clarke County is considered a priority county for the ACLU of Georgia based off of our membership and based off of what we consider potential members as well. So we know where our members are and we know what an ACLU member looks like and we know that's where we can make change. That's where we can make impact. So that's why you'll not only see me, you saw my executive director last week. I'll bring my campaign manager down here next month, our policy analyst. We are embedded in Athens-Clarke County as far as change. You're making the change already. We just want to help and we want to be plugged in any and every way possible. That's why when you're saying that your biggest issue is redistricting, our biggest issue is redistricting as well. We were the ones who drafted Senate Resolution 52 and House Resolution 369. That's also known as the Democracy Act, an act to end gerrymandering in the state of Georgia. So the three components of that with Independent Redistricting Commission, the transparency and standards, those are happening right now. I had a meeting with the chair of the redistricting committee. My days get mixed up during legislative session, I'm sorry. I think yesterday, I know, it's only Tuesday. Yeah, that happened on Monday and last week I had a conversation with the chair of the redistricting committee of the Senate before, but that's a priority for us. The reason why I wear this badge is one, to let people know all lobbyists are not bad lobbyists. I'm an ACLU lobbyist, I consider myself a good lobbyist. They know me down at the Capitol based off of the bills that have been defeated or proposed and say, that's Chris Bruce. We already know where he stands on the subject. Do they know where you stand on the subject? That's what they care about. They care about the constituents. Why? Because you can vote them in and you can vote them out. So I'm happy to be here today. I'll be here another time, just invite me back. And if you need any more questions about membership with the ACLU, more information about it, please feel free to let me know. Thank you. And to Chris's left another familiar face to Athens, Jean de Forte. I wanted to say Jean, but it's not pronounced that way. It's Jean de Forte. Jean learned about the power of the people to demand more of a government as a child when the upstart citizens party took control of her hometown in upstate New York. Her family doctor became the new mayor ending the Democratic machine stranglehold and leading the town to become an all American city. Jean is a member of Indivisible 10, first vice chair of the Morgan County Democratic Committee, and a member of the Coalition of Good Governance who leads the legal battle for election integrity in Georgia and North Carolina. These days, she has focused on election integrity. She has been a plaintiff in several of the lawsuits brought by the coalition, shared her financial analysis with legislators during the HB 316 hearings, has testified before the state election board and helps educate voters and county officials across the state about election integrity issues. Welcome, Jean de Forte. So thank you. And I'm gonna run you through a little bit of an overview of our work because it's gonna give you some ideas about things you might ask questions about and things you should know. The coalition for good governance is dedicated to ending electronic voter suppression. Remember those three words. Our focus is on how the introduction of technology into our elections has created opportunities for bad actors, foreign and domestic, to keep us from voting and to change voting outcomes. We're a small nonprofit. We're not as high profile as the ACLU or Fair Fight, but we have worked with both. But we are changing elections in Georgia. We got Georgia's old voting system banned. It's the first time in the history of the United States, a statewide voting system has been banned on constitutional grounds, yay us. And recently, we announced research that proved that the Georgia election system was indeed penetrated by bad actors for the research will reveal more. And that's another first. You've heard they have no evidence of hacking. They have no evidence of votes were changed. Last week in federal court, we announced we have evidence. We had to fight hard. We fought to get access to those machines and we're still fighting to get access to Winterville machine number three. The Secretary of State's in court asking for permission to destroy that machine because he doesn't want answers, but we want answers. You, I think, want answers. As you just saw in the film in Georgia, we cannot count on the law to protect our votes because for more than a decade, we've had a Secretary of State ready to act without following the law. We spent hours last session educating legislators about the costs and risks associated with electronic voting systems. And we're working with legislators during this session to introduce laws to further protect our vote. I was down lobbying just yesterday. We're leading the legal fight against electronic voting and other voting problems in Georgia. As you mentioned, I've been a plaintiff in two of the suits, including the missing votes in the Lieutenant Governor's Race where 120,000 votes are missing. They were only votes cast on machines. They were votes in 158 out of 159 counties and they were concentrated. The missing votes were concentrated in African American neighborhoods. You can only do that with electronics. That is the face of electronic voter suppression, but we have not been given access to the machine yet. We will get more answers when we get access to the machines. Our team's been tracking the rollout of the new system very closely. 30 of us spent nearly 200 hours watching the pilot elections in the fall. And today and next Tuesday, there are special elections in South Georgia and we're down there observing them now. As a result of that, we can bring an on the ground real life perspective to what's really happening. And here's what you need to know. The final deadline for delivery of all equipment under the contract was January 20th. All equipment under the contract. As of last week, the end of last week, only 81 counties had received some of their equipment and virtually no counties had received the electronic software without which you can't program ballots and test the equipment. So all those printers and scanners were gathering dust because you can't do anything without the brains. Meantime, the new voting tablets and printers take up much more space and electricity than the old ones. So we're finding out as they roll into places, we're finding out that they don't fit. Those polling places don't fit the required number of voting stations. The legislature in the last session took a look at those long lines you saw and said, we need one machine per 250 electors, registered voters in a precinct. On election day, that translates into about one per 71 actual voters on average. If that rule had been in place, in that election we just saw, it would be 171 and what was actually deployed, would it shock you to hear that only two thirds of the equipment we actually owned was in the field in November 2018? So the actual ratio was about one to 99. So the legislature said one in 250, but the polling places can't fit it or they don't have the electrical to fit it. I think it's 18 out of 20 here don't have the electrical capacity to fit those machines which will improve lines. And on top of that, exhibit one, this is a to scale version of the new tablet you're gonna vote on. I don't know if you've seen the real ones. How many rows back can you still tell which vote I cast? This is the big problem. They stand upright like this. They're bright and that big bar sets up and you cannot keep a voter's vote private. When you vote on this machine in person in precinct and yet our constitution says we have the right to a secret ballot and the statute that governs, you know, board of election members says you have to guard it and yet the law that said when we buy ballot marking devices they have to be able to let us vote in private and yet here we are 33,000 of them rolling out into the counties and they simply don't protect our secret ballot. So wherever you are, wherever you're from you need to be speaking out with your election officials, with your county commissioners, need to ask them how they plan to guarantee your ballot secrecy, need to ask them can they fit the equipment and need to ask them do they feel comfortable getting the equipment this late and running the election. Thank you for having me and I look forward to the conversation. Thank you, Jean. And to the left of her is Linda Lloyd. Linda is the executive director of the Athens-based Economic Justice Coalition. She has been a regular member of this community. You've seen her year in and year out. She will proudly tell you her statistics of the thousands of people that she has registered to vote with her group. She has also been recently the recipient of an award by the School of Social Work for that work that she's been doing. And so I'm gonna let Linda tell you a little bit more about herself and her work. Good evening. Good evening. Now, I was just sitting here thinking about how tired I am. I'm so tired of the election. But now that film, it really angered me. You know, when I saw the people that did not get a chance to vote, the lines were so long and what have you now. Economic Justice Coalition, we started in 2003 and Dr. Ray McNair is our founder. But we've been doing voter registration since 2004. And since that time, we have registered approximately 18,000 people, mostly in Athens-Clarke area. Now, and as I sit here thinking about those 18,000 folks, and then when I hear about the purging, I'm just like, yeah, we fighting against our sales or something ain't going right the more we put on, the more they take off. But the thing is what I do is I sit in my little hole and I just study work. You know, it's the one thing that I can do to help make sure that we have a democracy. Now, we are non-partisan 501C3 agency. And what I tell folks is we are non-partisan, but now we, but when they see us out here, they think we are democratic. And so we experienced some voter suppression. Like in 2012, I remember when we was over there at North Avenue, the family dollar store, the manager came out and called the policeman on us, saying that we needed to move. The policeman came and, you know, we checked, and I told him what we were doing. And he just said, move to the side of the store. Don't, don't, don't, don't, cause we were really in the parking lot. So that was one thing. Then another store over there, it was Pickler Wiggly, but it was bare, I think before it changed to Pickler Wiggly. Y'all remember the store changed names and the company was from Alabama. That manager called the policeman on us and the policeman came and the policeman asked her, man, what do you want us to do? And she said that she wanted my canvasser to be banned from her store because he was simply outside the registration. But now we are working with the Georgia Coalition of People's Agenda. And the Georgia Coalition of People's Agenda, they came to our meeting that we had last Tuesday with the Board of Elections and that kind of thing. And they had already sent a letter, they were dead on it, you know, well, live on it. They were on it, making sure that Athens-Clarke kind of did not close any of its polling places and that kind of thing. So I'm just here tonight to just kind of celebrate Athens-Clarke kind of what we are doing. I'm so excited about you all. I'm just too tired to really tell you how much. All right. Thank you, Linda. And our final panelists for the evening is Jesse Evans. He is a teacher in government and civics at Cedar Scholes High School, former sponsor of the Student Government Association. He's a member of the Georgia Association of Educators and a member of the Georgia Council for Social Studies. He's a board member of the Economic Justice Coalition and has worked with Linda Lloyd, a member of Athens for Everyone, a member for the NAACP, and he describes himself as an activist and organizer, as well as a board member for Athens Anti-Discrimination Movement. His government experience includes being a board member of the Athens-Clarke County Board of Elections and is now the chair, right? Of that election. So please help me welcome Jesse Evans. Hey, everybody. Good evening. I guess I want to say to you what I said to the former chair of the Board of Elections just to introduce myself and why I was interested to be on the board to begin with. This is really personal for me. Racial justice, economic justice, democracy. These are very personal to me as they are for you as well. I told the chair at the time when I got on the board in January 2017, I'm here too for a variety of things. One is to live up to my oath that I swore. I want to maintain integrity of elections. I want to expand the franchise, the maximize the franchise as much as possible. I want us to be transparent. And I said that early on, like early on, and I thought we were all on the same page and it turned out that we weren't. And I've been working ever since to pursue these goals. But seriously, surprisingly, there's been quite a bit of resistance, honestly, unexpected resistance. So we all got to watch this documentary. So I'm gonna take off from the documentary itself. And one of the things that we saw are all the different ways that suppression can actually be manifested. It's not just one thing, but actually a whole combination of little things that sort of accumulated and gave us the results that we had. Some of those things are things that the legislature has put into place, Chris, and you as a lobbyist for ACL, you are down at the Capitol. You're working with these legislators. Can you take a few minutes and tell us about some of the legislation that's coming down that may affect what we're seeing in our elections for 2020? Happy to do that. And I'll stay away from the voting machine's conversation. I'll leave that for somebody else. All right. Okay. Well, let's go with what's down at the legislature right now. Okay? What's been introduced in the 2020 legislative session? Number one, House Bill 757. That is a bill that was just introduced by Representative Fleming, and what it will basically do, it has a lot of provisions in it, but the thing that I want everybody to be careful about and think about is that it would eliminate the jungle primary. So as you know, you have a Senate seat coming up, especially the one that Senator Isakson is vacating. Right now that is a jungle primary, meaning that it's not a primary between the individual parties. It is basically a primary between all of the parties at once. So you're not getting the top Democrat versus the top Republican. It's all Democrats and all Republicans at one time. And you can have a runoff with just Republicans. You've got to runoff with just Democrats. This would do away with this and go back to your primary type of system that we typically are used to. Now, are you for it? Are you against it? That's what I want you to really think about. The parties have come together. Governor Kemp has said, I've been saying Governor Deal all day. I don't know why. Governor Kemp has already come out and said he would veto the piece of legislation. The question is, do your representatives have a stance on it and do you have a stance on it? Senate Bill 300 is a grant program to provide local governments the ability to conduct voter education drives all together, something that government should be able to do. Do voter awareness and voter education drives. House Bill 782, this bill and Senate Bill 283, these are bills that will make Election Day a holiday in the state of Georgia, right? Something that is sorely needed. And this bill, these type of bills have been introduced before. What I tell people if you're really for this, guess what? You don't have to wait for the state to do it. You can do it in your local community. So your city can pass this. Also your county can pass this type of legislation as well. We can have that conversation. I would love to have that with you. And Senate Bill 304 makes a Board of Elections in Whitfield County because they've had some issues before. That's just a layup. Basically these are the type of bills that are coming in down the pipe. I would tell you upfront, again 757 about eliminating jungle primaries, pay very special attention to that bill because when we talk about voter suppression, you have to have an avenue for that. So while this bill may not seem to be bad or good on its face, you don't know what kind of amendments that may be tacked on to this bill later on. And that's why the ACLU is monitoring it very closely. Thank you, Chris. So Jean, you were talking about the machines and one of the things that I read recently in the AJC is as you were questioning the privacy, basically the governor has told the counties you can get privacy screens, but you have to pay for it. And you have to pay for the ink and you have to pay for the special paper and all of that. Has there been discussion? I mean, the governor's cutting the budget. Now he's saying these are unfunded mandates. Where are the counties supposed to get this kind of money? Thank you. And I'd like to have a go at the question he answered too because there's a couple of other angles, but the unfunded mandate is a big thing. Last year I testified before the both the house and the Senate that there was an impending unfunded mandate inherent in this bill. And they said the Republican leaders of the house and the Senate both voted on the floor. No, there was no unfunded mandate to counties. It just, it was a fiction of my imagination. I took it personal. In fact, now we're finding differently. Just the two, there's a couple of new rules. They're in the process of putting, you have laws and then the department sets rules that flesh them out. Two rules have the effect of requiring at least two additional workers per polling place. Do the math on that. For every election, that's about a million four if on average they're paid $10 an hour and some counties are paid more and some less. That is a lot of money. In 2022, these 90,000 machines that are floating into the counties, they will have to start picking up the tab for either an extended warranty or the maintenance and replacement of them. The legislature said, oh, don't worry, that's no problem. They've been doing that already. Well, they, we had 27,000 machines in our last system. We have 90,000 now. It will drive costs through the roof. Special paper, there's something called security paper and we're paying the vendor for blank paper. I think it's 13 cents a sheet for this special security paper, but the ballots that are cast absentee by mail, they don't have to be special paper. So we don't even understand except it looks like a vendor boondoggle from our point of view. So the costs are just astronomical at the local level. Thank you for asking. Well, Linda, you were talking about the history that you have of registering voters, then trying to get them to the polls. You said you look at this documentary and you get tired. We know what the challenges are. What do you tell the people then when they are tired and they just think that their vote's not gonna count, it's not gonna make a difference. How do you talk to them to get them to go and make that vote? I make them angry. So angry people, I make them angry. I get out here, I can't call anybody's name, but I said, look at what the prison administration is doing. And then we got the stand your ground laws. I start talking about issues. I start talking about, okay, you ain't got no job, right? No, no, no, no, no. And I'm like, well, you're the reason for that. We got to get out here and participate in this government. And then we can say what you can get a job and then affordable housing. You know, I look at, I go to Belter Homes and that kind of place and I'm down there and like the one thing that people have a hard time and don't always know regardless of how many times I said it, they are not familiar with the fact that ex-felons can vote in Georgia. They think it's just like the other states. And I'm saying you can vote in Georgia if you are clean. Clean means you owe no fines. You're not on parole or probation. You can vote again by just filling this form out. And one time I said that so many times at the Department of Family and Children Services in their waiting room, and after I had said it probably for like, probably 40, 50 minutes, the man said, and I went over to him, he said, well, I'm from California. He said, nah, I was listening to what you were saying. He says, though, you mean I can vote in Georgia? I said, yes, you can vote, sir. And so he said, give me that paper. Cause see some people, and then I've been out there and I found the dollar and one man had been clean for five years. And he said, well, I should have been voting, you know, five years ago. So people are excited. And then too, when I go around like Nellie B, the same old, cause we send the same canvassers around. We decide this year we're gonna send the same canvassers to the same neighborhoods. And they started running up to me. Ms. Lord, tell them about the ex-fellow rule. Tell them about it, tell them about it. I said, no, I want you to begin to tell him about the ex-fellow rule because we gotta get to the bottom of this thing and screen it out in Georgia. Our ex-fellows can vote. So that's how I do it by making them angry. Yeah. Thank you. Now Chris, I'd like you to clarify a little bit about that ex-fellow rule. Right, and it was phenomenal. And that's what's effective as well. So thank you so much. I wanted to add on there that the Senate had a study committee over the summer about this as well. It was called the Senate Study Committee on Nonviolent Offenders Being Able to Vote. So they were looking into, although you may have been charged or convicted of a felony, if it was a nonviolent felony, what the state legislature would have guaranteed as a nonviolent felony or classified as a nonviolent felony, you would still be able to vote once you get out of jail or prison. The issue, right, the issue within that is that they held different hearings across the state and then they came down to a rule of we're either gonna do it and allow people who are convicted of felonies to be able to vote or we're not gonna do it. We all know how that story played out. But the thing that the chairman said, and I'm gonna say his name out here, is Chairman Senator Randy Robertson, and you can tell him I said his name, he said that he was receiving emails from people saying that we're not gonna, we do not want people to be able to vote. We do not want people who are convicted of felonies be able to vote, right? So he didn't release those emails or anything else. So then we had to bring activists together and say, no, we want people to be able to vote. So going along that, right now in the state of Georgia, if you are off of parole and probation and out of jail or prison, if you owe fines or fees, that's something that we're trying to clarify right now, you should be able to vote. If you still owe fines, fees or restitution, still try to apply to vote and have the secretary of state tell you if you can vote or not, okay? So even if they're, and that's the poverty that deals with voter intimidation and voter suppression, because the last thing that we all know, in 1877, the Georgia constitutional convention after reconstruction, after Georgia was sending black delegates to Congress, Georgia put in a moral turpitude clause, specifically added towards people of color so they wouldn't be able to vote. Because in the state of Georgia, if you're convicted of a crime of moral turpitude, you are stripped of your right to vote. We need to change that law. We need to change that law immediately. Thank you so much. So Jesse, as a member of the board and now the chair of the board of elections, and you're watching this movie, what do you think the board can do to help this situation of voter suppression in Athens-Clarke County? A lot, a whole lot. And we can do a lot more with your support, with support from community. So please come to the meetings. Please hold us accountable. Please hold our staff accountable. But polling locations, early voting locations in the history of this community, we'd never had early voting in East Athens, which is predominantly lower income area of Athens and has been historically marginalized. A lot of, a higher percentage of the population tends to be black or brown. And I thought it was a no-brainer. Let's go ahead and get early voting going on there. But met with resistance, met with resistance. Ms. Linda Lloyd and Mr. Fred Smith Sr. came to speak in favor of it. And an illegal executive session was called to push them out of the room, okay? And it was said, and I'm, this is my first go around on the board and I'm learning a lot. That was a lesson right there. They didn't want like, our director, the director of the office, Ms. Sozby has said, she didn't want to embarrass, she wanted to avoid embarrassment. After it came out, there was an illegal executive session. She said it to our mayor and commission. She said it to me, she said it to others that she wanted to avoid embarrassment. And they said it was for personnel reasons. That's why we needed to have a closed session. When we got into closed session, now I can say this because it was an illegal executive session. There were no personnel matters. It was them trying to get me to change my motion so that nobody on the board had to vote no to creating early voting pilot in East Athens. And they, like, when I tried to get it done, I've been trying to get it done since January, since 2017, and I wanted to do a pilot for the November 2018 election. And it was gonna happen at Cedarshills High School, which coincidentally, well not coincidentally, I teach there, but also like, that's a voting location on election day. So that should not be difficult to make happen. So I tried to make that happen. I was told over the phone by the director, so is me that it's great idea. Let's do this, just get back to me in a few days. Make sure we check these blocks, we get these things taken care of and we get to go. I take care of what I need to take care of. I get back to her. She's done a 180. And then months later, a month or so later, I find out by reading the flagpole magazine from an author that had done an open record request, Ed Morales. Thank you, Ed, because I didn't know this. I found out by reading the paper that she had, after hanging up with me, emailed the former chair at the time and told him that I was gonna be contacting him about this. And here's all the reasons why, like he should tell me that we can't do this. And she says to this day that it's, oh, I didn't realize we couldn't do it. I don't know, I'm figuring it all out, as you know, and I'm learning. But, so anyways, yes, the board can do a lot. We can increase advanced voting opportunities, particularly put them in locations where people who don't have a lot of means of transportation can have easier access. Polling location merges, okay? We've got merged polling locations, okay? 2018 was a disaster. That article that Ed Morales put together, I strongly encourage you to read it. The title is something to the effect of Adams-Cart County Board of Elections officials were unprepared for this election, basically. It was January article of 2019 in the flagpole. But long lines, very long lines at these merged polling locations, I immediately wanted to address this. Oh, we'll get to that later, that's what I'm told. We'll get to that later, we'll get to that later, we'll get to that later, and I keep bringing it up, keep bringing it up, keep bringing it up. And like, here we are, and they're still merged. They are still merged for this March election. Two out of, only two out of 20 election day polling locations have been deemed suitable for these new electronic equipment. Like, and so we, as a board, and to Mocha's credit, she put forward a plan B, right? The Cobb County, you guys have heard the pilot that they did in Cobb County, the paper ballots under, it was Judge Totenberg, is that, so that she issued an order to make sure that we have a backup in case things go awry, right? We have problems. So we, as a board, voted on Mocha's motion to have that. But again, it's, we get pushed back, pushed back, pushed back from the director of the office. Like, all the things that I've been trying to do, literally, all the things I've been trying to do, since I've been on the board, to expand the vote, to have more opportunities to vote, to have early voting available for people who don't have access to the vote, like, historically, haven't had access to the vote. It's been met with resistance and reluctance, and we can't do that, and we, and you know. And then, and then when the press gets ahold of it, oh, well, we tried it in the past for EATS app, and so one of the board members said, well, we tried that in the past. Like, that's a priority for us too. We wanted to do that too. And I just looked at them and said, if it was such a priority, why hasn't it done yet? Why am I the only one pushing for this to happen right now? Like, why are you pushing back on this idea? So we can expand polling locations, or sorry, provide more early voting opportunities. We need to unmerge the polling locations. We need to make sure that people are coming to meetings. We need to have the backup plan, which we do for paper ballots. We need to be innovative, right? Like, and we don't have to do what's been done all this time. You know, our board of elections didn't even have bylaws, and it's been around since the early 90s. No bylaws. Where are our policies for your board of elections? Where are they located? Where are those? Guess what? Nowhere. There's no record. There's no, like, I asked recently, like, for the binder, or for the, and they said, oh, this is it. This is all we have. It's, and so, so like, we don't have, we need to have a better site for people to access. We need to have policies online. We need to have minutes. They didn't wanna put the recordings online. They didn't, they were reluctant to put our recordings online for voters to see, right? These are all things I've been asking for pushing for, for transparency, for accountability, and it's just like, it shouldn't be this hard to get the people to do the right thing. It's a lot easier when you're in the room, and when you're vocal, and when you're holding people accountable, okay? Did I miss anything? Yeah, we do have, thankfully, we have a different composition with the board, and they, again, trusted me to be chair, and I'm very honored and grateful for that, and so I anticipate, I wanted to say something very, like, but I think it's, I'm not convinced that it's not gonna be a continued battle, honestly, but I think that we're in better position than we were when I first got on the board in January 2017, so. Okay, so we have some time for audience questions. Yes. Hi, I'm Kira, and this is a question for Jesse. Plan B, the paper ballots, what, what is the trigger for Plan B? Good question, thank you for that. So, basically, the statute, relevant statute says that if the board, if we decide, we determine that completion of the elections with the machines is impossible or impracticable, and either wholly or partially, then we have the discretion to enact Plan B. Go ahead. Follow up to that, knowing that only two of our polling locations can handle the machines, does that, are we not already there? So that is what I, the people, the three of us, so it was a 3-2 vote, and it was, Mocha, myself, and Willa voted for Plan B. The former chair and the Republican appointee voted against it at the suggestion of the director of the saying don't, don't, like you shouldn't, we don't, it was, it's always like, oh, we don't need to do that, we've got this, that, no, we wanna make sure that our people are taken care of on election day, right? So we voted to make it happen, and unless we have any indication otherwise, come February, then I don't see how, I don't see how we can do this if we can't get out the machines actually to function in the way they should be, like literally, two out of 20 are the only ones that have capacity to accommodate this, right? So staff is gonna have to come up with a solution, we were working on ideas, somebody mentioned doing, doing generators, possibly, but again, is that reliable, who's gonna pay for it, like what are the logistics of that, I don't, like so, I can't speak and say that the board will decide, I can just say that you have a good point with your question, and that- Karen? We're very much paying attention to that. Yes, hi, I'm Karen Foody. I have a statement, I'm not pontificating, a statement which is, co-workers are needed, there is a dearth of co-workers, and so, yeah. The question is, why were these districts merged? Was it an economic thing? So what you hear, so one is, you know, a couple places were merged because of construction for new schools and stuff, like, you know, there was a new, what is it, what is it, the Barnett shelves, but also, I think it was Oglethorpe, maybe, was also constructed, so they were merged with other locations, but they've been built, there's no reason to keep them merged, but also, I've been told by this director of the office that, like, since we've been hearing, oh well, we need to save more money, we need to reduce spending, if we merge these locations, like, she wants to merge even more. I've got a question, what's your name again? I don't know, I forget. Jessica, I'm really bad at names too. Jessica, we have a situation everywhere where early voting, it doesn't matter what polling place we are supposed to vote in with early voting, we traipse down to wherever they're doing early voting, why the heck can't anybody go to a polling location in their county where they are registered and vote? The electronics will present them the proper balance. Yes, yes. So that's a good question, this is something that's come up in discussions as well with board members. To be honest, I'm under the impression that this is an issue with state policy, but again, we'd have to get that changed. I'm not positive that that's the case and I'm very interested in looking into that because I know that some states, it's a non-issue, you go vote wherever you go, you can go vote in any location. But, and maybe Celeti from more state shops who maybe can say it, but I'm pretty sure it's a state policy. Yeah, Chris and I are, it's a legislative issue and until the legislature changes that, it's the way that it is now. Well, like the black people couldn't vote for generations, that was a legislative issue, right? Yeah, some black people still can't vote, so I know, it's great, I know, there's something that we need to change, and since some don't, right. So we all know, we all carry this around, it knows where we are, it knows what's going on. There's no reason that you shouldn't be able to vote at any polling location across the state. That's up to your legislature, right? Cause other states do it. Other states have done it, and you just paid all this money for new voting machines where you can't vote anywhere that you want. Makes no sense, well it does make sense. Okay, well now in the last few minutes, I just want our panelists to give their final thoughts on the idea of voter suppression or what's going to happen in 2020 or what message you would like to leave our audience with as they walk out the doors. And Linda, don't let them go out too mad. Jesse, we'll start with you. Raise your hand if you know that Clark County is under investigation by the Secretary of State's office for 2018. Yeah, so I wrote an open letter after the 2018 elections or during technically before they were certified, outlining an array of issues, like not the least of which is our local staffing tip-off about investigators coming to Athens. You know, it's a long story. I can share with you the link to the Google Docker, the PDF if you'd like, after this. But I haven't heard back. Like I checked in with the Secretary of State's office actually because I was interviewed by the investigator in November of that year, late November. And I haven't heard back about the results of the investigation. The State Elections Board is notorious for being multiple years behind and coming to a resolution or to their findings and making a decision about investigations. I called the follow-up and they were like, oh, that investigator's no longer even with his office any longer. Right, so they didn't realize that I'd recorded our interview and had Sarah Henderson of Common Cause George on the phone, speaker phone. She was a witness, had a turn in the room. And so I shared with them the recording and asked that they follow up to make sure that that investigator did a thorough job and they pursued everything they could pursue according to what was said in the interview. And I was told that they would accept the audio file and that they've placed it with the file for the investigation but again, haven't heard anything about results. I don't know, like it seems like a bad idea to have investigations take several years and then people leave positions and there's no accountability and then hopefully people forget about it and whatever, you know? Right, exactly. So I would ask that people, if the state level isn't gonna continue or gonna do their findings, and also there were local issues as well that they couldn't even investigate that I reported to our local city manager at the time at Blaine Williams and hadn't heard back about that either. I told you we had no bylaws, right? Now we have bylaws but the Board of Elections has never been audited by our local government and it's in all the years of its existence and I think that we have a very, I know we have a very capable auditor and Stephanie Maddox who is like full of integrity and she's very thorough and she's the right person for the job and I would hope that you all follow up with your commissioners and requesting that an audit of our Board of Elections office that's something we can do locally that can lead to better outcomes throughout 2020. Also, please come to the meetings. I know it's the first Tuesday of the month at three o'clock right now. We're gonna work on getting it later but if you can make it, that'd be amazing. If you can't send in your emails, email us and please CC the Board. Don't just send it to staff. CC the Board so we're all fully aware of what your concerns are and for better or worse, I'm an optimist, okay? So like, we're gonna do well. We're gonna continue fighting and do what we need to do to make these elections serve the people and make sure that these elections are fair. By the way, I'm the only Board member who like refused to sign off on the election results and that's a whole another story back in 2018. And then they hated me for it. Like, I was not popular for that. I was treated like I was the bad guy in the room. So, but I'll share more details but I would say just please keep up what we're doing, these organizations. Please get involved with what a registration. Please become a poll worker. We need 80 something poll workers. We really do. And please come to the Board of Elections meetings and consider even serving on the Board of Elections when that seat comes available. But thank you. I learned something here tonight because when we all get together, we can share notes. Now, Clark County had 200 provisional ballots and 120 were thrown out and they accepted 80. I didn't even know that we had a problem with provisional ballots and somebody back there said, University of Georgia. So that's where it was. Cause I kept wondering why the poll worker didn't tell the people that they could not do a provisional ballot if, say, you registered in the Airport County, you can't do a provisional ballot in Clark. So I wondered about that. And then the other thing I wanna say is I'm thankful to Jesse because Jesse taught me a new law on the books. I mean, maybe an old law, I don't know, but I had never heard of it. And that is if you live in a precinct and you wanted to get voter, voting, recount it. Recambus, all you gotta do is get three people in the precinct area to do a notarized petition and you can have your way. Now, no register ever told me that. They were like, you gotta be within 1% and that kind of thing. And then, cause I was surprised that the election that we had were in the candidate won by, I think, 13 votes. And so I was saying, you know, I just think we need a recount, but he didn't have enough, it wasn't enough difference to do a recount. But my thing is this right here gives the people power to do a recount. So I'm just putting that out there for everybody. And but now I know other ways to educate. I know the ways about the provisional ballot. I know the mistake that we had, but that University of Georgia thing back there kind of clarified it for me. And then the power that we as citizens have to get a recount, a recount. So I want everybody to know that. All right. The explosion of electronics in our elections is creating a national crisis of confidence and of reality. When you rely on a pencil and paper, you can have as many voting stations in a precinct as voters who show up, practically speaking. You can expand and contract for capacity. When you rely on a machine, you can deploy or not deploy machines. I was surprised last week when we finally confirmed only two thirds of Georgia voting machines were deployed during that 2018 election. You can have bottlenecks at check-in when you rely on those tablets to check-in and you can have bottlenecks at voting stations. So that's just the mechanical side of it. But the actual side of it is it is child's play to manipulate results and outcomes with these machines. And it is child's play to manipulate outcomes with these machines. And your vote, as the Reverend Dr. Spearman told me in a message to deliver to a group I was talking to here, he's the president of the NAACP in North Carolina. He's an older gentleman and he's been working on voting rights his whole life. He said, I've only recently come to learn that our vote is so valuable that governments will spend lots of money on equipment so that they can manipulate our vote. The old tools are there, but the new tricks are here and they're dangerous. They're very dangerous. So citizens need to stand up. They need to talk to local election directors. They need to support them. You need to talk to friends and family all over the state. We really need to get these machines out of our system. It's financial insanity in a state that pretends to be frugally responsible, first of all. But it's practical insanity. We will not be able to have confidence that everybody who should vote can vote. You saw all kinds of people who were run all over the place, that woman that got run all over the place, right? You'd vote here, no vote there, no. Reverend, Dr. Red, not Reverend, Representative Dr. Jasmine Clark, she's a researcher at Emory. She is a smart woman and she was nearly prevented from voting. She showed up. The e-poll book said, no, you're not here. She said, look, my voter page says I'm here, right? They refused to check the paper poll book. They didn't have the proper one in the precinct. She stood her ground and 30 or 40 minutes later, she was finally allowed to vote. But it shouldn't be that hard to vote. So we need to get the machines out of our vote. But in the meantime, show up and make sure everybody shows up. Just wanna say thank you again for having the ACLU here. People always say the trip from Atlanta to Athens is a lot. I was doing it when I was a law student. I love to do it now. So whenever you want me to come back, let me know. But I wanna tell you voter suppression is not something new, right? I mean, and people can go back to the 60s. It happened before then. It really happened at the founding of this country. It was only white Anglo-Saxon Protestant males with land that could vote. Never seen white males discriminate against other white males before, but it was happening. So look, you're right to vote. This isn't new. And people, it's when the people demand, when the people demand the right to vote, that's when things happen. So it could be from, somebody had challenged me about moral turpitude and saying it was unjustly against African-Americans. It was, it's in the minutes. Not only that, it was also when they passed the grandfather clause and literacy test and polling taxes. These are things that happen at your state legislature all the time. The same thing that happens now in the 2000s with exact match, or use it or lose it. These voting purges are statutory. It comes from a long history of what Georgia has been going through. And it's only when the people demand a change that things actually do change. So I'm just here to tell you that you have the power. And not only that, we're here to help. That's what the ACLU is here for. We are here to help in every possible way for the Athens-Clarke County Board of Elections. Every possible, just give me, well you have my phone number. Give me a call and we'll be there. I also wanna implore you that we have this program called the Peanut Gallery. Who's, has anybody heard of the Peanut Gallery? Awesome, awesome. The Peanut Gallery is basically the coalition of organizations dedicated to staffing and helping out Board of Elections across the state of Georgia. There are 159 counties in the state of Georgia. So we're working to be in every county, but we wanna make examples of certain counties. And Athens-Clarke County is the one that we actually do wanna make an example of. So again, your membership, the things that you do. When you ask me out, my email is political at ACLUGA.org. I will be answering those emails, whatever you need, we're here to help. Thank you. And would you all help me thank our panel? Jesse Evans, Linda Lloyd, Gene DeFoot, and Chris Bruce from the ACLU.