Commentary: Big Tent Ideas

CHAD ENNIS: The Left Is Freaking Out Over A Common Sense Voting Rule … Again

A sign advertising advanced voting in Georgia, Nov. 1, 2018. (Screen Capture/PBS NewsHour)

There is no election integrity measure that the Left will not sue to block. This seems like an outlandish sentence, but history keeps proving it true.

The Left’s election-industrial complex is ready to pounce at a moment’s notice. No rule is safe, not even one as simple as Georgia’s new policy requiring officials to verify that the number of votes matches the number of voters in an election.

Georgia’s State Elections Board recently passed a new rule requiring that before certifying an election, local officials “must first compare the number of unique voters who participated to the number of ballots cast from each precinct.” In simpler terms, these officials must make sure that the number of ballots matches the number of people who showed up to vote.

It is amazing that this needs to be mandated. Reconciliation is so basic that you would expect that election officials would not need to be ordered to do it.

As the former head of the Audit Division with the Texas Secretary of State, I can tell you that the first thing an election official is taught is that the number of voters and the number of ballots must be reconciled. Think of voters as the input and ballots as the output. Inputs should match outputs. If, at the end of voting, these numbers do not match, officials must attempt to fix it.

In many cases, there will be fewer ballots than voters for legitimate reasons. For example, some voters check in, get a ballot, and then decide that they do not want to vote. Other voters mistakenly leave the polling place without depositing their ballot in the ballot box. In both cases, the number of voters who checked in will be greater than the number of ballots.

These are small divergences, typically much less than 1%, but even these small discrepancies drive good election officials absolutely nuts. They will go to great lengths to find a missing ballot.

Georgia’s board, however, was not after these small discrepancies. They are after bigger problems. Consider: What if the number of ballots is short of the number of voters by 10%? What if there are more ballots than voters?

In each of these situations, two options are available for elections officials. One option is to shrug their shoulders and call it a day. I saw this in Harris County, Texas during the 2022 primary when 10,000 ballots went missing. It rightfully led to the resignation of the election administrator.

This is the option that the Left has sued to maintain. If there are thousands of missing or excess ballots, the Left wants to start counting with no questions asked.

The other option is the one the Georgia board took: Require local officials to roll up their sleeves, get to work, and figure out why the numbers don’t match before certifying the election. Any reasonable person knows Georgia’s approach is common sense and good public policy. But the Left sues to prevent good public policy, and in the process kills efforts to increase trust in elections.

That is inexcusable, especially now when confidence in elections is at historic lows. And that loss of faith is bipartisan. In the wake of the 2020 Election, according to a survey by Rasmussen Reports, 17% of Democrats and 28% of unaffiliated voters believed that it was very likely that the election was stolen (a view shared by 62% of Republicans). It matters little if their beliefs were correct. The fact is that many people believed the election was stolen. Numbers that high and bipartisan are a call to action for policy makers like the Georgia State Elections Board to build confidence through transparency and accountability. And the board answered by passing a modest measure to boost confidence and achieve more accurate outcomes.

But the Left will not answer the call. Instead, the Left sues to block popular, commonsense reforms and keep problematic laws on the books.

The Georgia case is also noteworthy because it shows the Left is continuously growing the ranks of its election-industrial complex. Here they chose former Solicitor General Seth Waxman of the white-shoe firm Wilmer Hale as counsel. Meanwhile, leading liberal lawyer Marc Elias has joined the Harris campaign’s legal team.

With the election just weeks away, the Left is doubling down on lawfare against commonsense election integrity measures like Georgia’s. It is tactics like these that explain why even the Left’s own voters believe they are attempting to steal elections.

Chad Ennis is the Vice President of Honest Elections Project.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.

(Featured Image Media Credit: Screen Capture/PBS NewsHour)