 Good morning. In the manner of Athens Park County Court of Elections and Registration, this is case number 202-005. We're calling the meeting in order. My name is Ryan Jarling. I'm the general counsel of the Secretary of State's office. Myself, I'm starting with the gallon with the aging's office will be presenting this case. I just wanted to make a short introduction before we call witnesses to try to help you get you guys, one of the witnesses is trying to help get you guys a sense of what's going on, I don't envision examining that myself, but I'd like to speak to you. I think one thing to talk about before you to the witnesses is a quick overview of George Wally, and state election board rules and regulations. OCGA 21-300 says, the equipment used for casting and counting votes in county, state, and federal elections shall be the same in each county in this state. That's the crux of George's implied voting system. The same statute as my paragraph says, once such equipment is certified by the Secretary of State, a state impracticable for use, all elections shall be conducted with the use of scanning ballots marked by electronic ballot lines. The dominion system currently being used in 158 Georgia counties was first certified by Secretary of State on August 19, 2019, and was re-certified on February 19 to use the salt variables. State election board rule 183-12, 183-1-12-101 says, beginning with the 2020 presidential preference primary, all federal, state, and county elections, voting in the polls, including both election day and advance voting, shall be conducted via ballots marked by electronic ballot markers. SCV rule 1-14-0.02 has the same requirement to use electronic ballot markers for advance voting. That same 183-1-12-1 also requires counties to have a sufficient amount of emergency paper backup ballots in the sense that something does not happen. It does not happen the way it's supposed to. So there's a backup plan built into the law and state election board rules. However, that backup plan doesn't swallow the fact that Georgia has a human life voting system. The state statute and state election board rules clearly state, here's what it has. Here's the equipment that we're going to use. And I know there's a big argument in the general assembly about should we go camera for ballots? Should we go long devices? There's argument for that in the state commission of the same night. There have been arguments in court about it. So there are people who are very passionate about using camera for ballots. But that's not the way that the board general assembly and in corresponding to this board has enacted Georgia law. To just give a little background, on March 3rd, the Abbots-Clark County Board voted 3-2 to immediately stop using the ballot marking devices. They found it impracticable to use ballot marking devices in a way that protects a ballot secrecy while allowing sufficient monitoring of the equipment. One legal point I want to make before I wrap it up. The Georgia Supreme Court has held, in a fact pattern not too dissimilar from this case, where a local government was interpreting a statute about what is to the greatest extent practicable mean. The Supreme Court said, practicable is a word susceptible of a limited range of beings. And to say that one must comply with the requirement to the greatest extent practicable is not to say that he must comply with it only if he feels like he's behind or he needs a good idea. The statute leaves some flexibility to authorities in cases in which strict compliance would be impracticable. But that does not indicate that the provision of the statute are not mandatory. And I think that's what we have here. The statute is mandatory, and it allows for emergency provisions. But it doesn't allow for basically ignoring the statute. If the statute were entirely optional, the Supreme Court goes on to say, there would be no need for a provision according to such flexibility. More importantly, including, let me say, this is the city of Marietta, the summer hour of the Supreme Court's patient 2017. More importantly, practicable does not mean convenient. In modern use, it's practicable as commonly understood to mean capable of being accomplished or feasible in a particular situation. To say something is impracticable is to say that it reasonably cannot be done. It does not mean merely that it's convenient. Again, members of the board, I'll talk about the law in just a moment. But we have a slightly different view of the facts here. We have a board of elections administration caught between a rock and a place with multiple requirements and committee sentences conflicting requirements of the new Georgia voting statutes. For most among them is the 254-1 voting moves for every 250 voters. And another set of obligations is the prohibition on changing polling places within 60 days of a primary or general election. And even if you have your 60 days, you have notice requirements before those 60 days. So it really extends that time out to about 75 or 80 days. And in this case, what the facts will show is that the deficiencies in the Athens-Clarke County polling places, specifically about six that are very small, did not come apparent until after the Secretary of State's office did an inspection of those polling places. And at that point, it was too late to change them. And in fact, there was a threat to sue the Athens-Clarke County Board of Elections and administration if it did change the polling places. And so the board faced one hand tied behind their back on not being able to change polling places and having to comply with this rule regarding the number of voting votes per voter. And as early voting started, and you will hear, the number of ballot marking devices in the one early voting place was too many to satisfy the new board's other obligation and constitutional obligation to protect the right to a secret ballot in Georgia. That is the right that appears not only in the Constitution, but in about 20 places in the election code. So faced with those circumstances, this board decided to use the mechanism that is available under Georgia law. When the use of voting machines is not practical, the pan-mart paper ballots may be used in their set. And Mr. Germany talked about the uniform system. And indeed, Georgia does have this new uniform system. But the uniform system contains an out clause. And that is in section 2 of 21-2-300. It says, unless otherwise authorized by law. So you must use these ballot marking devices unless otherwise authorized by law. And the law upon which the line was 21-3-3-3-4, which provides a relevant part that if for any other reason at any primary or election, the use of voting machines totally or in part is not practicable, the superintendent may arrange to have use of voting for such candidates or offices or for such questions conducted by paper ballots. So what does practicable mean? Well, we rely on the various opinions that Mr. Germany rely on, city of Marietta versus summer hour. That's 302, Georgia 645, Georgia Supreme Court case from 2017. Practical does not mean that the use of voting machines is simply optional. That is not our position. Or that the obligation to use voting machines can be overcome simply by disagreeing with them. That is not our position. Practicable does not mean convenient, as Mr. Germany said. But to say that something is not practicable, just to say that it is not feasible in a particular situation or reasonably cannot be done as a paraphrase from the summer hour. So who gets to decide what is practicable and what is not practicable? Within limits, the Athens Farm County Board of Elections and Registration gets to make that call. That's why the Sumter County case came out the way that it did, because the judge in that case found, and when I say the Sumter County case, I know you're familiar with the case challenging the use of ballot parking devices in Sumter County. The judge in that case found that the Sumter County Board of Elections and Registration had some degree of discretion to determine whether it was practicable or not. And the plaintiffs in that case, the petitioners, had not established that the right was so clear as to eliminate that discretion. We think that standard applies here. So under the law, it is up to the Board of Elections and Registration to select and equip polling places and to ensure the secrecy of the ballot. And we believe consequently that the legal standard for this state election board has to be that you must find that no reasonable board faced with circumstances that this board faced could find that the use of voting machines under the circumstances was not practicable. We think it's a very high standard. And if you do not apply that high standard, if you apply your own view of that, then judges in the courts of this state should be able to apply that view. And I dare say that there will be more lawsuits like the one in Sumter County. And judges in those cases will not be able to defer to the discretion of Board of Elections. So we think that is the law. And in fact, as I have outlined them and we will present them over the next few hours, we'll support the board of elections decision, in this case, given the facts that they were presented as of last Tuesday. The ballot marking device is not able to scan it, because some of that was approved by the General Assembly once it was certified by the Secretary of State that complies with Georgia law, which it has been. This is not discretionary. There is a clear mandate from the General Assembly that counties use this equipment. And as we all know, the state is a significant investment in the Dominion system, funded over $1 million in equipment at the Stark County, and is now not currently being used. Now, certainly, no one here today are arguing that voter privacy is not a legitimate concern. It is protected by the state constitution and in the election code. But it is not justification for scrapping the equipment altogether, because which is a handmarked imbalance. The Secretary of State's office understands the privacy concern, and that is why there are training materials and manuals and diagrams to help staff at the pun level decide how they can best lay out their employment. And it provides solutions on the go with the staff as to how they can achieve voter privacy. Here, the Director of Elections clearly took this issue seriously. She developed a privacy plan and frankly moved ignored by the board. Georgia election code and the board's rules only permit the use of paper ballots in an emergency situation. When the use of voting equipment is impossible or impractical, that's the language in this issue. What this means is a technical malfunction of the equipment when it simply just doesn't work. Now, as Mr. Secretary, we started today off today, impossible or impractical does not mean being lenient. It doesn't mean when it's the preferred policy choice that would come before. The versus Supreme Court has defined, we all know when it's possible to mean, so the versus Supreme Court has defined the term impracticable as it's used in the statute and they have said to say that something isn't practical is to say that it reasonably cannot be done. It does not mean merely that it is inconvenient. Now, if you're reserving on this dispute that this is the digital decision report of the board and that they were weighing the team interest or team privacy and had a set of aggregations that accommodate the number of voting votes they had to provide by law. But here, to be clear from the chairman's testimony, that the board didn't really consider whether privacy was achievable. It seemed to be a hormonal conclusion when they went to vote. The staff worked hard as we thought. I'm also going to privacy plan. They had sketches made. The board didn't wait to review those for each holding location they had sent it forward with an easy vote. This vote was also going to be a vice as a county attorney. At the meeting, since all day was in the immediate record, we would hear them talk about this situation and how the same situation happened down in Sumter County and the very argument that voter privacy issues mandated that counties switched to handmark paper ballots that had already been rejected by the judge down in Sumter County. I was present at that hearing in Sumter County and what it was was an emergency hearing on the right of Nandana Square. A good rights organization had sued the county board trying to force them to use handmark paper ballots based on privacy concerns. The superior court judge rejected that emergency motion on the right of it. And if what the judge found there was not that the board had discretion to make that decision, what the judge found was that there wasn't evidence that it was impossible to achieve voter privacy. And many of the same exhibits and evidence were presented at that hearing as of today where the judge persuaded that options that were provided by the Secretary of State's office to achieve privacy could be implicated by that particular board. It's also important to note that in addition to being able to achieve voter privacy with the BMD touch screens by using screens or curtains, any voter that has a concern about the privacy of their ballot and prefers to vote on paper can do so when they're doing the walk. Any voter comes to the question asking to be doubted and go by asking for it. There's been some discussion in testimony about this town of Pilots. The board's like they were, this title was ordered by Judge Togenberg in the current case last summer. That plan was to touch out an emergency backstop in case the new dominion would meet either bit in on time, wasn't available to choose or kind of been certified by that time. It was not presented as an alternate option for counties. And the judge in that case has certainly not ordered that this backstop plan be put in place. So to conclude the evidence establishes that the Adams Park County Board of Elections committed violations of the Georgia Election Code specifically 21 to 300 requires that all counties use the dominion ballot, working devices with optimal standards. We've also cited codes 21 to 25, 256 to 267, which require boards to approve pulling locations that cannot accommodate the requirements that is required. As far as options that are available to the board, those EGA 21 to 33.1 provides the particular remedies that are available. The board can order the Adams Park County Board of Elections to use the system, to use the camera and save the ballots in a way that violates the election code. Public broadband is also a remedy that is available. The board can order that the county pay to the Secretary of State for investigative costs, by understanding for this matter, that becomes substantial because it's a certain issue, a full-time endeavor for many staff members of the office that the emergency period was announced. The board may also impose a civil penalty of up to $5,000 per violation. The appropriate penalty is within the board's discretion. It's also within your discretion to determine what's a violation. A violation can be each paper ballot that was passed improperly, or can be written today in the board of elections, it's not a compliance with the law. So it has to be determined both the amount for violation that should be imposed, or in the number of violations. Unless we change the staff report provisions, as a notice of hearing the prior notice of, we believe that there's also been violations of the S&P rules 183-1-12-0-1 and 183-1-14 play votes. Thank the board for waiting out here for all of this testimony. I'm not sure we've signed up for seven hours of the hearing, but I think we're delivered today. I want to respond to a few things on the side of the table. Just said, number one, she said that hand-marked paper ballots are only available in the board of law. That is simply not a law. It's 21-2-3-4, which is the statute, which has a distance of quite a ton of time, and it allows the use of paper ballots when voting machines become impossible, or it's impractical to be used for not impractical, not impractical to be used for actual language. And there is, in terms of general opinion, directly on the point, and I'll give that some conclusion, it is a 1997 Georgia opinion of a attorney general, a 1997 opinion authored by Michael Bowers, so it was massive, it was a different state. And the issue there was not a technical malfunction, it was an impracticability or impossibility because the ballot language was too long to fit on the voting machines that were in use then. And so that became impractical, and Mr. Bowers cites the 3-4-4 and says, now under this situation, you can impracticability, and so you should use hand-marked paper ballots in order to maintain a good point. So I think it's clear that this fail-save can apply other than in situations where there's a formal malfunction or a power outage. There's a separate section of the code that applies to the emergency ballot situation, and that does apply not only to a technical malfunction or to a power outage, but it also applies to situations where the line is more than 30 minutes long. So it's yet another provision there, but that's not the provision that the AFRAS part of Kennedy's Board of Elections relied on, the Board of Elections here, relied on 21 and S-2, S-3, S-4. Ms. McGowan also said that voter privacy is not a justification for describing ballot parking devices, and we respectfully disagree with that position. Ballot secrecy is a constitutional right under the Georgia law, and if it is impossible or impractical to guarantee that right using the machines than in a particular situation, then it's not only possible, but actually a duty of a county election board to declare that to be impossible for the party. Now, having said that, this is not a case, and I hope it became apparent from Ms. Raddler's testimony, where the Athens Park County Board of Elections took the position that the BNBs can never be used in a manner that is consistent with voter privacy, which was about secrecy. That is not a position. The position is, what you heard here today, that you couldn't fit enough machines that required the machine in the space alone in a way that would apply to the Secretary of State's fact specifically promulgated in order to guarantee this ballot secrecy. In fact, even though the Board of Elections didn't have any sketches at the time that made this decision, the ones we have seen look an awful lot more like Mr. Hardee's examples of what not to do than what to do. And there's a real problem in Athens Park County, particularly with respect to about six polling places, whether you can fit the number of machines in the space in a manner that is remotely consistent with the collection of Mr. Hardee's layout. And so this Board being unable to do that,