https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/...on-spoiled

"...The image of the ballot, obtained by Just the News, shows the voter messily scribbled a large blob in the box to select Trump as president while also putting a thinner check mark next to Biden's name.

At 6:10 p.m. ET on Nov. 4, 24 hours after the ballot was first scanned and rejected by Machine 5150, a panel of humans decided the vote should be awarded to Biden, with the notation "mark removed for Donald J. Trump." You can see that ballot here:

File
05150_00232_000018_0.pdf
Scores of additional ballots that same day had checks manually removed next to Trump's name as well as many other candidates up and down the ticket — Libertarians, Democrats and write-ins alike — and the votes awarded instead to other candidates.

Welcome to the arcane process known as adjudication, where human judgment is substituted for machine scanning in cases where voters incorrectly filled out a paper ballot. Election officials and official observers have dealt with it for years, with everyday citizens mostly oblivious to the process.

But in 2020, adjudication played a much larger role in states like Georgia, which allowed hundreds of thousands of additional citizens to vote absentee for the first time during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In all, more than 5,000 of the 148,000 absentee ballots cast — or about 3% — in Georgia's largest county required some form of human intervention, according to logs obtained from Fulton County by Just the News under an open records act request...."

Their sample spoiled ballot was like a straight Democrat vote. Yes there's a blob there by Trump, but it's PAINFULLY obvious that vote was correctly counted as Biden's. Show me something better.

That was a Biden vote AS LONG AS the reverse situations were treated the same way. I have no doubt adjudication would have got that one right. I'm not convinced they would have changed a Biden blob to a Trump vote.

Yeah, pretty obvious here.

IMHO, the voter should have requested a new ballot. Remove any doubt.

That is a Biden ticket. No question

You guys are assuming that the ballot was received with all those other checks on it. For all we know, when that ballot was received the only marking on it was a vote for Trump. Someone then took it,’scribbled over the Trump vote and then put a bunch of Dem checks on it.

How many ballots for Biden had only him no down ballot votes? This could have been one for Trump. Hard to believe a dem voter puts a check by Trump on the very first line.

(08-09-2021 06:27 PM)banker Wrote:  You guys are assuming that the ballot was received with all those other checks on it. For all we know, when that ballot was received the only marking on it was a vote for Trump. Someone then took it,’scribbled over the Trump vote and then put a bunch of Dem checks on it.

How many ballots for Biden had only him no down ballot votes? This could have been one for Trump. Hard to believe a dem voter puts a check by Trump on the very first line.

Very possible. One of the checks in the audit I would want performed is the likelihood a ballot that was straight democrat except for president got flagged for adjudication. If that was happening, then there was easily some manipulation going on.

I don’t want to go all tin foil hat, but if a true forensic was done, would you not compare the ink or pencil composition of the Scribble and the checks? To make sure the same implement was used?

(08-09-2021 04:51 PM)Eldonabe Wrote:  That is a Biden ticket. No question

It's likely a Biden vote, but certainly not "no question". Voter could have checked Biden, decided it was a mistake, and filled in the oval for Trump. We don't know 100% the voter's intentions. Ballot should be tossed.

(08-10-2021 07:29 AM)Eldonabe Wrote:  I don’t want to go all tin foil hat, but if a true forensic was done, would you not compare the ink or pencil composition of the Scribble and the checks? To make sure the same implement was used?

They could do that. However, if it was all done at the precinct, they could be using a batch of pens that would match each other as they were created during the same batch run.

What I'd be interested in is whether a straight democratic ballot plus a Trump vote was flagged for adjudication. Then I would want to know if a straight republican ballot plus a Biden vote also went to adjudication.

Neither of those scenarios should occur. But even in the case that both scenarios are sent to adjudiction doesnt mean nothing nefarious was happening. They could have simply changed the Trump votes and left the Biden votes alone. But if only the Trump ballots went to adjudication, that in of itself is nefarious, whether or not votes actually changed. There is no reason for that to be happening.

I find it hard to believe that the same person would vote for Warnock AND Trump at the same time

Upon reviewing the law on this, this was NOT a Biden vote. If there are marks for more than one candidate, the voter is to write SPOILED on the ballot, and return it to get a new ballot. If a ballot contains votes for more than one candidate in the same race, that is an overvote AND CAN NOT BE COUNTED. These ballots are not allowed to be fixed in adjudication. So the issue here isnt trying to determine intent. The issue is that this is an invalid ballot and cant be counted.

So, what we will find here are votes for both candidates, where votes intended for Biden were illegally counted, and votes for Trump would not have been.

(08-10-2021 07:50 AM)EverRespect Wrote:  

(08-09-2021 04:51 PM)Eldonabe Wrote:  That is a Biden ticket. No question

It's likely a Biden vote, but certainly not "no question". Voter could have checked Biden, decided it was a mistake, and filled in the oval for Trump. We don't know 100% the voter's intentions. Ballot should be tossed.

My thought is that adjudicators should not be mind readers. Its the responsibility of the voter to make their choices clear.

That's the part i don't get:

Quote:If there are marks for more than one candidate, the voter is to write SPOILED on the ballot, and return it to get a new ballot.

In fact, I was even told in previous votes by poll workers (from both parties, who were doing their job CORRECTLY), if i make a mistake like that on a ballot, I was to mark the ballot in some way so they would know it was invalid an get a new ballot. Any ballot that cannot be determined to have selected the appropriate number of options (for ballots where you could mark up to "X" options) was supposed to be discarded completely, even if I marked eveything correct but that one item.

97% working correctly sounds pretty good to me.