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Lansing City Clerk Lends A Hand In Georgia Hand Tally

Chris Swope with primary election ballots
File Photo
/
WKAR/MSU
In this WKAR File Photo, Lansing City Clerk Chris Swope stands over thousands of presidential primary ballots in Lansing. Swope is volunteering in Georgia to help that state conduct a mandatory hand tally of the presidential election.

Lansing City Clerk Chris Swope is in Georgia this week to help the state conduct a hand tally of nearly 5 million ballots. 

 

Georgia election workers have been counting ballots since Friday under a state mandated audit. 

As a volunteer, Swope is helping to conduct a risk limiting audit, a procedure that uses statistical methods to verify accuracy and flag possible anomalies.

He says there’s a number of irregularities that could occur when reviewing the ballots.

“Are there too many or too few votes in a county, and is that because they missed entering some data or missed a batch of ballots or entered some data twice?” Swope says.  “So, first before you discover the errors, you have to track down those potential sources of new error.”

Swope says Georgia uses the same voting system as Ingham and many other Michigan counties.

“Any voting system is intended to accurately count the votes, so I want to make sure that we have that faith in the systems that we’re using,” he says.

Joe Biden is the projected winner of the presidential race in Georgia. 

In January, the state will hold a runoff election that will determine the balance of power in the U.S. Senate.

Kevin Lavery served as a general assignment reporter and occasional local host for Morning Edition and All Things Considered before retiring in 2023.
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