A rare data error has held up the vote counting in Fulton County, Georgia as Democrat Jon Ossoff was leading the special House election.
The rare data error is a new twist on what is becoming a regular problem in US elections:
JUST IN: Rare data error from one of the cards means Fulton Co. will have to manually go through hundreds of cards to find the culprit.
— WSB-TV (@wsbtv) April 19, 2017
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Putting aside potential election meddling for a moment, the US clearly has a broken election infrastructure that is outdated and not secure. Social media is buzzing with conspiracy theories about voting machines, but since the 2000 election, voting machine conspiracies have become the norm in both parties.
Democrat Jon Ossoff was unlikely to get to 50% due to the political leanings of precincts still to be counted, but something is very wrong when in the United States can’t even conduct a low turnout House election without experiencing issues.
The fact is that the election infrastructure used in the United States is not trustworthy, and our elections will be open to tampering and interference until state and local governments move to restore confidence in our voting systems. The fact that people automatically assume that an election has been tampered with is a crisis of confidence that undermines our democracy.
The current occupant of the White House spent a month discrediting the US elections while working with the Russians during the 2016 campaign, so if the American people want their elections to once again be a shining example of democracy, they are going to have to take matters into their own hands, run for state and local office, and fix this problem themselves.
Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
