Investigator is excellent choice for State Election Board
A story in your Feb. 5 edition reported on the appointment of Elizabeth Ann Delmas as investigator to the State Election Board but unfortunately missed the real story — that Ms. Delmas is a highly qualified election professional with a well-deserved reputation for bipartisanship in election work. She is an outstanding choice to work with the State Election Board.
Ms. Delmas served as a career investigator for the Department of Defense in the United States and overseas. After her Defense Department service, she has worked in a number of roles to promote election integrity in Fulton County — poll manager, assistant manager, poll clerk, poll watcher and, most recently, as Republican team leader of Fulton’s ballot duplication panel.
Under the Georgia Election Code, each county using electronic voting equipment impanels a duplication panel to review ballots that are illegible or otherwise not readable by the tabulator. The panel is composed of bipartisan teams, one Democrat and one Republican, who jointly examine each questioned ballot and adjudicate voter intent.
This arrangement requiring side-by-side bipartisan collaboration is one of the best features of Georgia’s Election Code. Democrats and Republicans work in an atmosphere of collegiality and teamwork to ensure that all ballots cast are counted. Ms. Delmas and her Democrat team leader counterpart are widely respected by Democrats, Republicans and the election staff with whom they work.
Georgia’s voters would be well served by improvements to the election law extending this bipartisan structure to other critical election functions. Poll clerks, vote tabulators, voter registration managers and post-election canvassers are good places to start.
Let’s make Georgia elections a transparent, bipartisan undertaking. If we do, the 2020 election, whatever the truth, will become a story of interest only to historians.
MICHAEL HEEKIN
MEMBER, FULTON COUNTY BOARD OF REGISTRATIONS AND ELECTIONS
Speak up for democracy
As I daily skim the front pages of the AJC, the perception is that the turmoil in D.C. is politics as usual. But it is NOT usual.
Elon Musk, a wealthy citizen with no government experience who was not elected and personally benefits from his government interventions, has been given the keys to the castle. He is wreaking havoc with all the reasonable decisions our elected officials have made since our independence. This is a coup.
Please acknowledge the seriousness of the crisis of the U.S. government. We need to know the whole situation and realize that all of us will be impacted negatively. We all need to find our backbones and be willing to speak up for our democracy, including the AJC.
If not us, then who?
JEAN MILLKEY, ATLANTA
Keep Reading
The Latest
Featured
