But, if it "saved" something other than the "intended" vote, when the printouts of the "intended" votes were counted, they wouldn't match the number of "saved" votes. The Georgia hand recount of the printouts proves this is false. And, counting those "intended" ballots has nothing to do with anonymity. Those ballots are still anonymous.
You're assuming the "shucked" envelopes are discarded. They aren't. Those envelopes can still be reviewed to verify a lack of voter fraud. All that shucking does is protect the anonymity. It doesn't matter which vote goes with which envelope if review of the envelope proves it was a legitimate voter.
https://bipartisanpolicy.org/blog/recount-or-audit-whats-happening-on-the-ground-in-georgia/
"Contrary to recounts, an audit seeks to verify that the primary counting method is accurate. In Georgia, Risk Limiting Audits, or RLAs, are required by state statute. In an RLA, a certain number of ballots are audited based on the margin of victory between candidates in the race selected for auditing. Closer margins require more ballots to be reviewed in order to achieve a high standard of statistical confidence in the overall result. The process involves taking a small batch of ballots from precincts based on a unique identifier. Even pulling a few hundred ballots can be labor intensive. For contests with very small margins of victory, manually auditing all ballots is more efficient.
So, what is happening in Georgia right now? Raffensperger ordered a hand-tally of all ballots across the state. One may think that this is a recount, but there are two reasons it is not. First, recounts in Georgia are not done by hand. Second, in Georgia, the results must be certified before a recount can be requested while an audit—per BPC’s recommendation—occurs before certification.
So, the Georgia maneuverings must be an RLA, right? Not quite. What Raffensperger has essentially ordered is a hybrid of an audit and a recount. This means that while they will be assessing every ballot, which is not normal in an ordinary RLA, they will be doing it by hand, which is not normal of a typical recount."
https://www.ajc.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/hand-recounts-georgia-paper-ballots-barred-election-proposal/7uQrB3SjgW4ylcVOpb4hHM/
Election integrity organizations say recounts of paper ballots should be done by hand to help ensure that the printed text matches votes tabulated from the bar code.
“You have to have a manual process to confirm a computerized process,” said Marian K. Schneider, the president of Verified Voting, a nonpartisan organization that promotes accurate and verifiable elections. “The best way is to do a hand recount that can look at the human-readable text on the paper output.”
Voters across Georgia will use the state's new election system during the March 24 presidential primary. They'll make their choices on touchscreens, then review printed-out paper ballots before inserting them into scanners for tabulation.
The recount proposal alarmed election integrity advocates who feel misled by Raffensperger’s statements that paper ballots will result in a physical recount.
"They feel like it's a bait and switch," said Marilyn Marks, the executive director of the Coalition for Good Governance, a plaintiff in a lawsuit seeking hand-marked paper ballots. "You're getting an electronic recount, not a physical recount."
https://www.ajc.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/voters-contront-georgia-lawmakers-over-new-touchscreen-election-system/Jj26WLlCuMXKuzL6nZo9oI/
State legislators listened to three hours of testimony during the first hearing on a bill to buy touchscreen machines that print ballots,
a $150 million technology that would create a paper ballot that could be used to check the electronic count.
Members of the House subcommittee didn't vote Tuesday on House Bill 316 and will continue hearing from the public Wednesday.
Voters told state legislators that touchscreens are an expensive solution that won't solve concerns about election integrity.
They want paper ballots bubbled in with a pen, saying a $30 million hand-marked paper ballot voting system is the best way to prevent tampering and hacking.
“Hand-marked paper ballots are the state of the art when it comes to secure voting systems,” said a voter, Elizabeth Shackelford as she received a round of applause from the audience. “Security of our vote is extraordinarily paramount. ... Why would you not go for the ultimate in transparency?”
But election officials said the touchscreen voting machines, called ballot-marking devices, are accurate because they can help avoid errors that could be introduced by voters marking their ballots by hand....
Critics of the touchscreen system, including cybersecurity experts, say the computer-printed ballots couldn’t be trusted.
Voters wouldn’t necessarily catch errors on their printed ballots, and voting information could be encoded in bar codes that humans wouldn’t be able to verify.
“There’s not a person here that can read a bar code,” said a voter, George Balbona. “You guys are boldly cramming this bill down our throat.”
About 55 percent of Georgia voters surveyed said in a poll by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution last month that they prefer paper ballots filled in by voters over paper ballots filled in by a computer.
https://www.courthousenews.com/activists-lose-bid-to-replace-georgia-voting-system/
ATLANTA (CN) — A federal judge on Sunday again rejected voting integrity activists’ efforts to force Georgia election officials to abandon the state’s new touchscreen voting machines in favor of hand-marked paper ballots for the November election in light of security concerns.
For the fourth time since activists brought a 2017 lawsuit challenging the integrity of Georgia’s voting machines,
U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg refused to order top election officials to replace touchscreen ballot-marking devices with hand-marked paper ballots despite concerns that the voting machines are vulnerable to security risks.
In a 147-page order issued the day before early voting began in the Peach State,
Totenberg, a Barack Obama appointee, ruled that a “fundamental modification in the election system” so close to Election Day would overwhelm the secretary of state and county election offices.
“The court has already seen in the record of this case enough election chaos, operational deficiencies, and challenges on all levels, plus stress in the system spiked further by Covid-19 complications, that the court cannot embrace a rosy view of the simplicity of moving to a total, comprehensive paper ballot system with so little time to prepare for such a major transition,” the judge wrote....
The system uses touchscreen voting machines known as ballot-marking devices, or BMDs, to print a paper ballot with a non-encrypted QR code that is read by a scanner. The system does not produce a voter-verifiable paper record of the votes cast, requiring voters to trust that the barcode accurately conveys their intended ballot selections.
Activists allege that the barcode recording of votes can be manipulated through hacking.
Georgia is the only state using the barcode-based BMD system statewide as the mandatory voting method for all in-person voters.
https://www.courthousenews.com/under-court-order-georgia-rolls-out-new-voting-system/
In mid-August, the Coalition for Good Governance sought to amend its complaint in the lawsuit in which Totenburg ordered Georgia to get rid of its direct recording electronic machines.
The system being implemented across the state, the coalition said, did not comply with the law the Legislature passed in April, and was unconstitutional.
Voters, the third proposed amended complaint said, could not verify that ballots’ barcodes read by the machine matched with what people intended to vote.
“Despite the fact that cybersecurity experts and government officials recommend a voting system that included a voter-verified paper trail, the Proposed Election System will rely on a non-voter-verified barcode as the elector’s actual vote,” the proposed amended complaint said.
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Raffensperger is ordering a hybrid "recount" as political cover. Georgia forced a system onto voters, in which they were consistently polled as they not wanting, that was 3-4 times the cost of the previous system, that removed individual voters the ability to verify their actual votes, raising questions on why the new system was not actually compliant with actual legislative voting system requirements, which was all approved by a Barack Obama appointed judge and DNC loyalist. A system, that still prevailed in the bidding process despite all this, by a company , Dominion, where the money trails back to a private equity firm, the McCarthy Group, where no one knows who are all the investors.
If voting sites were breached, as Powell will eventually claim, then there is ZERO guarantee that physically printed out ballots associated with their respective sites were secure. They are counting ballots in those storage rooms, but that doesn't change the flaw in that some ballots can be taken out and some ballots can be put into those storage rooms. This issue is exactly why so many people want non stop counting on Election Day, none of this "Well's is so late, let's send everyone home" problem. Because over a choice that can impact trillions of dollars, public policy and who controls American's nuclear arsenal, and with four entire years to plan out the logistics, there can't be non stop rotating shifts for a couple of freaking days?
If you have a system currently in place with a non verifiable voter record, then the ONLY modification possible to that existing system, to assure an individual voter is being recorded accurately is a modification where voters have to dox themselves. That's not actual and functional anonymity.
Those mail in outer envelopes can be reviewed one by one, and they are not. Is there an exhaustive and complete review of the outer envelopes? No, there is not.
This entire situation is far more complex than many of you are making it out to be. ( But reducing it to Twitter sized sound bites makes "Orange Man Bad" easier to shout) Many of you want Powell to give you everything on YouTube exhaustively right now, and if not, you scream out that she's completely wrong. Here's the problem, she doesn't need to be completely right. If she can prove even 10-15 percent of what she's claiming, this entire country descends into open civil war on the streets.