Time To Fix Things — By John Reed

Time To Fix Things
Now that Stacey Abrams has finally, if not graciously, conceded the governor’s race, it’s time to fix things. My conservative friends may disagree, but some of Abrams’ complaints about our current system need to be looked into. It’s in both parties’ interest to have the most fair, efficient, and transparent elections possible.
To start with, let’s take party politics out of the process. A non-partisan electoral commission should be formed, made up of people with no ties to either Republicans or Democrats. Failing that, let the makeup be equally represented by members of both parties. Once formed, the group has four issues to tackle:
1. Who should be eligible to vote?
2. What’s the best process to register these voters, in a fair and foolproof way?
3. What’s the fairest and most verifiable way to allow these people to actually vote?
4. What’s the fastest and most transparent way to count and report the votes?
I suspect the first two items will be the most contentious. Abrams’ folks are convinced votes were criminally denied for relatively minor things like mismatched signatures. Kemp counters that his office registered more than 200,000 new voters in the last two years. Including the purging of more than half a million illegal and ineligible names off the rolls, that’s a net increase of more than 700,000 new voter registrations. Considering many, if not most, of those were Democrats, the Abrams camp’s complaints don’t hold water.
But it’s clear the process needs attention, if for no other reason than to avoid these kinds of questions. The question of who should be allowed to vote and how to do it are beyond this week’s space: however those issues are decided, it’s important that once the rules are agreed upon, they can’t be changed by sore losers.
The voting system in Georgia isn’t bad….especially compared to Florida. But there’s always room for improvement. Just as there are those who think inner city Savannah is part of southeast Georgia, there will be those who will pick any nit in the system to make it work in their favor. Both parties and all future candidates deserve the best voting system we can get.