By: L. Cramer
Our news cycle moves far too fast and important topics that should still be on our minds are removed and replaced by the other must see stories happening right now.
But something that shouldn’t leave the thoughts of Cobb County conservatives is the Cobb County Board of Elections refusing to do their duty of cleaning up the voter rolls.
As I’ve said before, every time we talk about the Cobb County Board of Elections I will cite Georgia Code 21 2-228, which states:
The board of registrars of each county or municipality shall have the right and shall be charged with the duty of examining from time to time the qualifications of each elector of the county or municipality whose name is entered upon the list of electors and shall not be limited or estopped by any action previously taken.
So, why is the left, and even some of the right, afraid of election integrity? I have a theory, and if you’re willing to take a ride with me I would be happy to tell you.
My first job out of college, and my ultimate career path, was in public relations (PR) and communications. At that time, social media was not used for marketing and PR purposes, yet – I was right at the cusp of this phenomenon. So, when I finally wrangled an editor to write a story in a physical newspaper for one of my clients, I was thrilled. What an amazing feeling to get my client great coverage through pitching editors and journalists – it was a fun job.
Well, when it came time to report just how many “impressions” each newspaper article received we had a formula where you took the circulation numbers of the paper and multiplied it by two, because you could assumethat the original reader passed their copy of the paper on to at least two people. This made our impressions huge; because there was really no way to accurately know how many people had read the article.
Then online news, website visits and social media clicks started becoming more popular and the digital numbers did not match the overinflated newspaper article formula. In fact, the online numbers were far more accurate than our assumed three people per one newspaper calculation.
So, here’s my theory as to why the Cobb County Board of Elections, and any election board in America who thinks like them, refuses to clean its voter rolls: because if the rolls were actually clean there would be a more accurate representation of voters officially logged with the county and state; which means, no room for errors in tabulation or pausing the voting overnight.
Additionally, there are new rules for Georgia election offices, which are vehemently opposed by the left and some on the right, where one in particular states that the number of ballots cast must equal the number of voters who come into the polling station. This would require accountability, accuracy and would make no room for errors.
One reason PR firms liked to inflate the impressions numbers is because it added immense value to the work we did – which was important of course – but it was presented as though the client could not do this work themselves or even begin to understand or have the connections we did in order to get their story out to the public. Sound familiar?
In a world where politicians and other public officials believe in their value formula, the public is introducing a new way to do politics that requires accountability and accuracy – which most elected officials are extremely afraid of because so many of them pander, then make back door deals outside of the voter’s view.
If election integrity is so scary to the Cobb County Board of Elections, and some on the right, the question the people need to be asking is: why? Why is accountability and accuracy something to fear, rather than something to embrace?
In my experience, it’s because those who are opposed accountability and accuracy have something to hide.
