Skip to content
Project 2025
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories
Congress Bill Spotlight: renaming Gulf of Mexico as “Gulf of America”

Congress Bill Spotlight: renaming Gulf of Mexico as “Gulf of America”

Project 2025: Part II

Project 2025: Part II

The False Promise of Dismantling DEI

The False Promise of Dismantling DEI

Redistricting

Redistricting

Bible on top of an American flag

Project 2025: A Christo-fascist manifesto designing a theocracy

No need to dim the lights on new voting machines, Georgia judge rules

Georgia voting machines

A Georgia judge has rejected a request to mandate paper ballots in upcoming elections. The Coalition for Good Governance claims the new voting touchscreens are so large and bright that they can be read from a distance, violating privacy rules.

Georgia Secretary of State
Bill Theobald
By Bill TheobaldFeb 28, 2020
Bill Theobald

Bill Theobald is senior writer at The Fulcrum, where he focuses on everything to do with voting. This December marks his 40th anniversary in the business, and he still believes -- now more than ever -- that the glow from great journalism can truly light the world.

See More Writings by author

A Georgia judge has rejected a legal challenge to the state's new voting machines from a group that argued the touchscreens are so big and bright that they violated privacy rules.

The decision means more than $100 million worth of new voting equipment may be used across the state starting Monday, when early voting begins in the Democratic presidential primary.

Earlier this week, the Colorado-based Coalition for Good Governance and others asked for an emergency order requiring paper ballots to be used in a runoff election for a state Senate seat and the state's presidential primary.

Sumter County Superior Court Chief Judge R. Rucker Smith denied the request Wednesday, acting quickly because early voting in the legislative contest had begun and the start of the presidential balloting is imminent.

Tuesday is the runoff between Republicans Carden Summers and Jim Quinn for a legislative seat in the state's southeastern corner. Presidential primary day is March 24.

The plaintiffs argued the new screens can be read as far as 30 feet away. They said changing the brightness of the computers, the angle of the screens or the type size was not sufficient. And the state cannot solve the problem by hanging curtains because Georgia law bans anything like a booth or curtain around the voting devices that would prevent election officials from overseeing the voting process.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

Election officials said the solution was as simple as positioning the equipment so the screens face a wall.

Under the new voting system, Georgians will choose candidates on a touchscreen and then print out the results. The printout will then be fed into an optical scanning device.

Last March, Republican Gov. Brian Kemp signed a law requiring new voting machines for the entire state. The new devices had already come under earlier criticism because the paper ballots display a barcode for tabulating the ballot and potentially double-checking results. But voters cannot read the codes to know whether the printouts match their choices.

The Coalition for Good Governance filed a separate lawsuit on that issue. It is still pending in federal court.

Latest news

Senate confirms RFK. Jr as the nation's health secretary
Governance & Legislation

Senate confirms RFK. Jr as the nation's health secretary

One Lesson from the Elections: Looking At Universal Voting
Electoral Reforms

One Lesson from the Elections: Looking At Universal Voting

The Burden of Survival and Pursuing Justice
Rule of Law

The Burden of Survival and Pursuing Justice

Congress Bill Spotlight: BIG OIL from the Cabinet Act
Governance & Legislation

Congress Bill Spotlight: BIG OIL from the Cabinet Act

Read More

MERGER: The Organization that Brought Ranked Choice Voting and Ended SuperPACs in Maine Joins California’s Nonpartisan Primary Pioneers

A check mark and hands.

Photo by Allison Saeng on Unsplash. Unsplash+ License obtained by the author.

MERGER: The Organization that Brought Ranked Choice Voting and Ended SuperPACs in Maine Joins California’s Nonpartisan Primary Pioneers

Originally published by Independent Voter News.

Today, I am proud to share an exciting milestone in my journey as an advocate for democracy and electoral reform.

Keep ReadingShow less
Half-Baked Alaska

A photo of multiple checked boxes.

Getty Images / Thanakorn Lappattaranan

Half-Baked Alaska

This past year’s elections saw a number of state ballot initiatives of great national interest, which proposed the adoption of two “unusual” election systems for state and federal offices. Pairing open nonpartisan primaries with a general election using ranked choice voting, these reforms were rejected by the citizens of Colorado, Idaho, and Nevada. The citizens of Alaska, however, who were the first to adopt this dual system in 2020, narrowly confirmed their choice after an attempt to repeal it in November.

Ranked choice voting, used in Alaska’s general elections, allows voters to rank their candidate choices on their ballot and then has multiple rounds of voting until one candidate emerges with a majority of the final vote and is declared the winner. This more representative result is guaranteed because in each round the weakest candidate is dropped, and the votes of that candidate’s supporters automatically transfer to their next highest choice. Alaska thereby became the second state after Maine to use ranked choice voting for its state and federal elections, and both have had great success in their use.

Keep ReadingShow less
Top-Two Primaries Under the Microscope

The United States Supreme Court.

Getty Images / Rudy Sulgan

Top-Two Primaries Under the Microscope

Fourteen years ago, after the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional the popular blanket primary system, Californians voted to replace the deeply unpopular closed primary that replaced it with a top-two system. Since then, Democratic Party insiders, Republican Party insiders, minor political parties, and many national reform and good government groups, have tried (and failed) to deep-six the system because the public overwhelmingly supports it (over 60% every year it’s polled).

Now, three minor political parties, who opposed the reform from the start and have unsuccessfully sued previously, are once again trying to overturn it. The Peace and Freedom Party, the Green Party, and the Libertarian Party have teamed up to file a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. Their brief repeats the same argument that the courts have previously rejected—that the top-two system discriminates against parties and deprives voters of choice by not guaranteeing every party a place on the November ballot.

Keep ReadingShow less
Ranked Choice Voting May Be a Stepping Stone to Proportional Representation

Someone filling out a ballot.

Getty Images / Hill Street Studios

Ranked Choice Voting May Be a Stepping Stone to Proportional Representation

In the 2024 U.S. election, several states did not pass ballot initiatives to implement Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) despite strong majority support from voters under 65. Still, RCV was defended in Alaska, passed by a landslide in Washington, D.C., and has earned majority support in 31 straight pro-RCV city ballot measures. Still, some critics of RCV argue that it does not enhance and promote democratic principles as much as forms of proportional representation (PR), as commonly used throughout Europe and Latin America.

However, in the U.S. many people have not heard of PR. The question under consideration is whether implementing RCV serves as a stepping stone to PR by building public understanding and support for reforms that move away from winner-take-all systems. Utilizing a nationally representative sample of respondents (N=1000) on the 2022 Cooperative Election Survey (CES), results show that individuals who favor RCV often also know about and back PR. When comparing other types of electoral reforms, RCV uniquely transfers into support for PR, in ways that support for nonpartisan redistricting and the national popular vote do not. These findings can inspire efforts that demonstrate how RCV may facilitate the adoption of PR in the U.S.

Keep ReadingShow less
© Copyright 2025