Georgia's Election Rules Keep Changing, Are Rural Counties Paying the Price?

In this episode, host Tate Fall sits down with Tonnie Adams, Elections Supervisor for Heard County, Georgia, and one of the state's most experienced election administrators.

Tonnie shares how he went from a Georgia Tech engineering graduate helping implement Georgia's first statewide electronic voting system to becoming the election official responsible for serving nearly 9,000 voters in rural Georgia. Together, they discuss what voters often don't see behind the scenes of election administration, from logic and accuracy testing to post-election audits and the challenges of implementing new election rules with limited resources.

The conversation also explores Georgia's recent primary election, record voter turnout, the growing role of state election policy, and why local election officials are often asked to do more with less. Throughout it all, Tonnie offers a candid look at what motivates election officials to keep showing up—and why he believes they are the "doorkeepers of democracy."

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Welcome back to Keepers of our Republic, a new weekly podcast from Keep Our Republic that takes listeners inside the institutions at the heart of American democracy. Every week, Keepers of Our Republic features thoughtful conversations with election administrators and retired federal judges. We explore how elections are really run, discuss why an independent judiciary is essential to a strong republic, and separate fact from fiction in a fast-changing world. Learn more about Keep Our Republic, a nonpartisan nonprofit, at our website, https://keepourrepublic.org

Welcome back to Keepers of our Republic, a new weekly podcast from Keep Our Republic that takes listeners inside the institutions at the heart of American democracy. 

Every week, Keepers of Our Republic features thoughtful conversations with election administrators and retired federal judges. We explore how elections are really run, discuss why an independent judiciary is essential to a strong republic, and separate fact from fiction in a fast-changing world. 

Learn more about Keep Our Republic, a nonpartisan nonprofit, at our website, https://keepourrepublic.org

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:10

Welcome back to Keepers of Our Republic, a weekly nonpartisan podcast talking to election officials and judges about defending the rule of law and free and fair elections, also known as How We Keep Our Republic. I'm your host, Tate Fall. If this is your first time joining us, don't forget to hit that like and subscribe button and join us here every week on Thursdays for these conversations. Today I'm joined by Tawny Adams. Tawny is the election supervisor of Heard County, Georgia, a rural county in West Georgia with a population of about 12,000 and about 9,000 registered voters. He's been involved in elections since Georgia's conversion to a statewide electronic voting system in 2002. He was appointed Chief Registrar for Heard County in 2012 and was appointed election supervisor in 2017 after the elections and registration departments were combined under one board. He was recently honored by the Secretary of State and the Georgia Elections Division with the Francis Duncan Award for Excellence in Election Administration. Tawney also serves as the Legislative Committee Chairman and Region 4 facilitator for the Georgia Association of Voter Registration and Election Officials, also known as Gabrio. Thank you, Tawny, for joining me today.

SPEAKER_02 1:22

Thank you for the invitation. It's uh it's very busy right now. We're getting ready for the runoff election. If you hear some activity in the back, we're moving equipment as we speak. Um, but uh I'm glad to be here with you today.

SPEAKER_01 1:37

I love it. It never stops. It never stops.

SPEAKER_02 1:39

It never really does. Uh depending on what county you're in. Uh, we have another part of the state that will be doing an election in July. They're going to be getting uh the the audit is the 26th, and they're probably already getting ready for July early voting for the District 13 congress congressional seats. So it really never does. It really doesn't.

SPEAKER_01 2:00

My goodness. Well, tell our listeners a little bit about yourself and how you got into elections, and then also tell us why you stay with everything that's gone on. What makes you keep coming back?

SPEAKER_02 2:10

Okay. Well, I actually have an engineering background. I have a degree from Georgia Tech, Go Jackets, and uh the uh the uh I I knew a few people who knew a few people, and they needed someone with a little bit of tech savvy to do the electrical voting con uh electronic voting conversion we did in 2002 with D Bold. And I did that on a far a part-time basis back in the 2000s, and then in 2012, the county uh needed a new county registrar, and I was between careers, and I decided to give that a full-time try, and I've enjoyed it. Uh it's a rewarding career, uh to say the least. And what the reason I stay we are the doorkeepers of democracy. We really, really are. When you have the right to choose your leaders, you have the right to steer the uh the destiny of the republic in one direction or another. And I think that is a very powerful, powerful tool, and I like to be one of those to facilitate that. So it's it's it's a it's a privilege. There are days that I wondered why I got into this, and then there are other days that that really make it rewarding.

SPEAKER_01 3:25

So yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Uh I love that. I mentioned at the beginning that you were overseeing elections and heard when the boards were combined. So can you tell our listeners who are mo mostly voters a little bit about what that process was like and what impact that had on your office?

SPEAKER_02 3:44

Yes. The uh up until 2017, the the probate judge of our county was the election superintendent. And there was a separate board of registrars that handled absentee voting and voter registration. And the uh the with the conversion to a new system potentially, there was a lot of uh activity in the probate court. It got to be the to the point where the probate court was having to dedicate more time to elections than they were to their probate court. So the decision was made back in the day uh to combine those together under one roof so that elections and voter registration would be separate from the probate court. And most uh, in fact, all counties in the state now in Georgia are to that point. We had some probate judges who um were still doing elections up until a few years ago, and the state passed a law saying that that has to be now separate. So now every county in the board, excuse me, every county in the state now operates under a either a separate board of elections and board of registration or a combined board of elections and registration.

SPEAKER_01 4:55

I think that that's so interesting that Georgia is different at the county level because every state is different. Like in Virginia, where I used to work, all the counties and cities were set up the same, where there was a board with three people and they were appointed based on the party of the governor. And then, you know, there's states like Alabama where there's four different offices that have to coordinate at the county level to run elections. So that's what's interesting, I think, about Georgia is that it is different in other counties. There are still counties that have split boards, like you said, and then there's counties that have one unified board. And so it's interesting that there's still that difference there, even though the elections are all run the same way. It's different people sometimes doing that work.

SPEAKER_02 5:37

Right. And in smaller counties, uh, typically what you have happened like we do here, our board is not party specific. Now we're all nonpartisan by nature because that's why you should run all elections. But um, in our particular situation, we're not party specific. In other words, we don't have a democratically appointed board member, and we don't have a Republican-appointed board member either. They're just appointed by the board of commissioners.

SPEAKER_01 6:04

That's also different.

SPEAKER_02 6:06

The the other nice thing about the way that we structure our board is if we do have a vacancy, then the existing board does have some input and suggestions on who to bring on. So, for instance, we could we could theoretically bring on a poll worker that has been experienced in doing the poll worker part so that we're not bringing someone in off the street that doesn't know what they're doing. So I love that. Take our advice, granted, they don't have to take our advice on that, but that is another thing that we can do that we have the ability to do. Uh, and I'm not on the board. Uh, the election supervisor by nature is not uh they did it that way so that if there were an emergency, then anyone, as long as they were a competent individual, could do the election supervisor's job in case uh of an emergency. So that's one reason why I was characterized it that way.

SPEAKER_01 6:53

I love that. That's great. And I think that's another thing where every county is different, you know, the way that the boards are appointed is different. And I think there's a lot of value in structuring it the way that you guys do in her. So I I wish other counties would copy and paste that same same framework that you guys have. Um okay, let's get into a little bit post-mortem of the May primary election, which we just wrapped, and like you mentioned, already getting ready for early voting in just a few days. Um, so we saw record turnout this election with over 2 million Georgians voting across the state. What do you think drove such high turnout in an off-year non-presidential year election?

SPEAKER_02 7:38

Uh, I think people are more engaged now than they've ever been before with elections. We like to have a good turnout for the primary because the primaries in many counties, that's where the local officials are elected, especially in our county that only has uh we're predominantly Republican county. Uh, if we were a predominantly Democratic county, it would be the same situation where most of your local officials are elected at the local level in the primary. And then there's a six-month period during which they have to wait until they take office. But uh most of the counties in Georgia are that way. We have some that are bipartisan where you have a general election in November. But a lot of the counties of the smaller counties, especially, are uh predominantly of one party or another. That's not to say we don't have Democrats in our county, but most of our county voters vote on the Republican tickets so they can vote for their local officials.

SPEAKER_01 8:32

That makes sense. And I think that that's huge that we're seeing that engagement because that's something that as election officials, we beat that drum all the time that you need to show up for those local races. And so I think this was really exciting, I feel like to see that actually come through and the voters really pay attention to it.

SPEAKER_02 8:50

I think another thing that drove this election is the high-profile uh governor's race as well as the uh uh on the Republican side. Now we we actually had more Democrats than we've had in a long time vote on the Democratic side to get a Democratic ballot. And I think that's the the politics of the day are driving that. Uh as far as as far as Republican numbers, you had the the state, uh they had the governor's race that was a high profile with the uh with the negative campaign ads. Uh I actually had a few people come through and make a lot of comments about that that they wish that they, you know, they wish they would focus on the issues instead of each other. And uh that's just that's one of the drawbacks of our system is that uh rather than focus on what they're going to do, they're going to focus on, well, don't vote for me because this other person is XYZ.

SPEAKER_01 9:42

So yeah, absolutely. It's funny because it's my husband and I were talking since there's a runoff, it's every ad, whether we're watching cable or whether we're streaming on Hulu or Peacock, the ads are all political for Georgia. And it's just like you can't escape it. And it it is, it's a lot of I'm not really getting, okay, well, what makes you different? Like why, like what issues set you apart from the other candidate if it is all attack ads, and then on the other side, it's defending themselves against the attack ads, and it it it's just it's I feel like we're kind of missing missing the point there. So I totally agree.

SPEAKER_02 10:22

That's the nice thing about having a D VR. Uh, I'm I'm always the day, I'm always a day late on my shows, but at least I can fast forward through the political commercials.

SPEAKER_01 10:30

That is definitely worth it. I love it.

SPEAKER_02 10:33

And if you're watching, and if you're YouTubing, there's always that skip ad. I love that skip ad. That's a nice nice too. Yeah. Oh, and skip ad.

SPEAKER_01 10:41

Exactly. I love it. Oh gosh. So overall, when we talk about across the whole state, what do you think went really well with this election?

SPEAKER_02 10:50

Uh as far as I have heard, we haven't had any really, any really bad things happening. That there was the incident in Fulton County that caused uh the polls there to close a little bit later. Um, I'm not I'm not aware enough of what happened to to comment on that, but I do know that Fulton had a situation where their toll had to stay open late. Unfortunately, that does happen. There's always a situation there. Uh always that off uh that off-schedule moment that always happens. But uh by and large, I think we're uh the system we have works. And I think it works well. And at this point in the operation, I really don't think that changing midstream would be the most wise thing to do, especially for those counties conducting if uh July election special for the District 13 race. I think it would be disastrous for those counties to have to change their system at this point in uh at this point in time.

SPEAKER_01 11:49

Absolutely. And we'll get into that in a little bit because I think that that's something that our listeners really need to hear about because it's not really being talked about because of the election, that that's just totally taken over the new stream. So I totally agree. Um, I did want to highlight this is the first election where our risk limiting audit shifted from runway one race to two races. Um, and I know the Secretary of State said all the results came back great, well within the margin of error, so no issues there. Did you notice any kind of impact at your level of administering that RLA, or was it not hard to do a second race?

SPEAKER_02 12:28

Uh that we were fortunate that we didn't have to count our largest batch, which would have been our absentee in person, which we had 650 uh votes early in person. I I know that you're you're one, you're thinking to myself, I do that in an hour. I used to do that an hour in Todd County. Um but yes, we only we had 650 uh early votes. So what we actually did, we considered separating the ballots, Democrat, Republican, and counting them separately, but it actually worked out much better by doing them all at one time because we had one Republican race, one Democrat race. So we were able to split the ballots as we went. And then the ballots that did not have a vote for any race, whether it was a blank race or a nonpartisan ballot, we could put those in a separate pile and every all the numbers worked out perfectly.

SPEAKER_01 13:15

I love it. So just another layer that we've added to show that the ballots, the way that they're printed, are the way they're being tabulated. So I'm I'm so glad to hear that it was, of course, easy peasy for someone like you, Tani. I'm not surprised.

SPEAKER_02 13:30

And the uh the the image audit that we do, I I like that a lot. Uh it gives us a chance to uh verify those results one further time. The uh our image audit was 100% accurate. I had to, I had to review, I believe, 12 or 13 ballots out of 2200 that I had to review by and visually. Uh so the image audit worked really well too.

SPEAKER_01 13:56

Awesome. And for our listeners who don't know, in Georgia, we do an optical character recognition ballot image audit. So all the ballot images are uploaded into a software and it uses that OCR optical character recognition to look at the print. Because in Georgia, and we'll talk about this a little bit more, um, when you get your ballot printed out, you have all your selections and then you have a QR code. And the tabulation actually occurs by scanning that QR code. And so that's where there's been a lot of concern is voters saying they can't read the QR code. So the OCR ballot image audit is an opportunity to show that the choices that are printed do match what that precinct's results showed. So it ties all the ballot images directly to the precinct level results. So you can see apples to apples that the numbers matched up. And I know when we did it for the first time in Cobb in November of 24, it was super easy, super easy to understand. Our poll workers that came in, our ballot review team would come in and they were able to click through it, no issues, review them, and then they were done. And we showed that all of our ballots matched our results. And that was, I think, a really cool and new use of technology that I think helped reassure voters that their ballots are being cast how they think they're being cast.

unknown 15:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:17

And another thing that I do on the local level, uh, I'm not sure how other counties do their logic and accuracy testing, but when we're doing our L and A, we call it L and A. So if I if I if it's uh if it sounds a little bit like jargon L and A, well, L and A, uh, we actually go through uh it was a much more laborious process for the uh precinct primary because we had so many ballots to print. Yes. So we actually do the uh ballots so that they come out one for the first candidate, two for the second candidate, three for the third candidate, et cetera. So it's a lot easier for runoff because you only have two candidates per race. You have to do four ballots of one blank, one with one, two with two. So we actually print those ballots manually. We vote them manually on the BMDs so that we have a test deck that we can guarantee the results of, and it comes out perfectly. So that also tells me that the QR code is working like it should.

SPEAKER_01 16:12

Yes, exactly. And and for those of our listeners who don't know, the logic and accuracy testing, the risk limiting audit, and the ballot image audit in Georgia, and then those LA testing and RLAs in other states as well, those are open to the public. So in Georgia, all the election officials have to post the notices of when they're gonna be hosting those. You can call your local election office and see. You're allowed to sit there. They typically will have a designee to answer questions if you have questions about what's going on. And it's an opportunity for you to go and see how the sausage is made and that you have full trust that would when you go to cast your ballot, it's gonna count how you intended it. And um, you know, we always had a few people show up at LA and the RLA, but I wish it was a lot more. And so for those of you who are interested, definitely reach out to your local election office and see about when those are taking place so you can observe.

SPEAKER_02 17:04

Yeah, I actually had uh the first time I had anyone watch my logic and negative testing in a very long time. Uh very nice lady from the Carter Center came down. Nice. Um, she got full access. Uh, she said, I I'm really, really not proud that you're letting me see. And and almost, you know, she was right over my shoulder watching me. And I said, I don't mind. Just watch and learn and ask questions, and I would say, Well, but this is why we're doing this, this is why we're doing that.

SPEAKER_01 17:32

So that's exactly right.

SPEAKER_02 17:34

It opened her eyes a lot to the things that go that uh the that kind of uh we get into when we're doing what we do.

SPEAKER_01 17:44

Yeah, I love that. I'm glad that that that she was able to to see that and and learn from you because you have a lot to share. So I'm glad that that she was there. Um, one thing you and I have talked a lot about over the couple of years we've known each other is the burden election officials here in Georgia have with new rules that are coming down from the state election board. And although sometimes new rules do help clarify a really gray area in law, um, sometimes they're overburdensome unfunded mandates. So, can you share with our listeners a little bit about what that impact is like at the local level when new rules are passed, especially in the middle of a really busy election cycle like what we're seeing here?

SPEAKER_02 18:29

A lot of the rules the state election board pass um have a have more of an impact at the lower level of a larger county, especially those of over 100,000 voters. The and what happens invariably is those rules add more tasks to the smaller counties like myself. In my office, I am the only 24-hour employee. I mean only 40 hour employee.

SPEAKER_01 18:59

Uh I have a 24-7.

SPEAKER_02 19:02

Well, yeah, well, that almost is 24-7 sometimes, it seems like. Uh the closer we get to election day, those those four o'clock till eleven o'clock days are kind of get hard. But when you're the only one implementing the rules, adding more rules and more paperwork, uh it just seems like you're adding uh you're you're adding more molehills to the mountain.

SPEAKER_01 19:28

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And we we've seen so much back and forth at the state election board over rules. You know, in October of 2024, they passed a slate of rules and most of them were struck down. Um we've seen more come over in this year. Um, it seems like that's been a big focus of the meetings. Um and I I do think, like I said, sometimes, you know, it is nice because when legislatures legislate, uh, it's a lot of gray area. And so sometimes it is nice to have the SEB come in. Um, but I think what's difficult is sometimes it feels like election officials' voice isn't being heard. Um, and and you know, you guys are the ones implementing it, like like you said. And and it's gonna impact every county differently because a small county like you, like you said, you're the only person really doing it, and you have to be well versed in the in the rule and make sure you're following it. And then in a large county, although they have more staff, they also have more voters. So I think it's important for our voters to be aware that that's something that we have here in Georgia and to to again engage and listen to the state election board meetings, do research on the rules, talk to your local election officials about what that impact might be like. Um, because it it is, it's a lot, and and it's always something, always something new coming at us.

SPEAKER_02 20:47

Yeah, and that was one of the big things, but that was just one of the things we uh we made very clear in October of last year. I mean, now it's not last year anymore, it's 24. Um they were passing rules and we were almost ready to start early voting, and it just didn't make sense to pass rules that close to an election. So that's one of the reasons why we proposed uh a blackout period before any election for new state election board rules. And we're hoping that that can be one of the things that we get passed in the 2027's uh legislative session. The uh to it's kind of like steering the ship when there's no iceberg ahead. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_01 21:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:30

You know, we're full speed ahead, and now you're wanting to make a course correction when there's really no reason for it.

SPEAKER_01 21:36

Yeah. Yeah, it's it's I I agree. I think a lot of times it's it's feels like um, you know, placating to to smaller groups that that are just really loud. And I understand people have concerns, and I completely understand why and how that happens, but as we've already talked about just in this chat we've had, all the layers that we have here in Georgia to show that our elections are safe and secure and accurate. I think sometimes we we lose touch and we get a little bit too in the minutiae and I hope we can kind of back out a little bit um and remember that we do have lots of layers in place to to protect our votes.

SPEAKER_02 22:19

Because some of the rules would require us to spend more funds that could maybe it requires us to store our equipment in a different manner. We may have to get a camera we may have to get data storage. And there's no it's basically an unfunded mandate. Yeah. You're used to do XYZ and then you expect our county to chip in to pay for the funds required to do this rule. And there's no uh it's basically well just do it. You've done it before do it now.

SPEAKER_01 22:52

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 22:52

And sometimes it's not quite that simple. We we're not all uh I have no access to my county website. Now I have a very very good IT team that uh all I have to do is email them and usually within a within the day within before I go home it's done. Post as far as posting to the website and things like that. But if it's after hours and they're at home I can't I don't have access to the website. So that's one thing we make clear to not only the legislature but the state election board is when you're requiring us to post notices or results or a report on a website, we have no access to it.

SPEAKER_01 23:30

Yeah and you're not the only one. There's a lot of smaller counties that that's how it's done is that there's one person who has the website and they are in the IT department and exactly right they're they're not staying with us till 2 a.m on election night waiting waiting for us to post. So I think that that's it's important to highlight that again every county is different. Every county has different struggles and different levels of access and I hope that we can maybe move forward in a in a more positive direction maybe once we get through this next special session. So speaking of that we teased that a little bit earlier for those of our listeners who are unaware Georgia is facing a looming deadline of July 1st to stop using those QR codes to tabulate ballots. And that was a law that was passed several years ago. So that is a law that has to stop July 1. However the legislature failed to pass any legislation that gave election officials guidance or funding on how to move forward during the regular session earlier this year. Governor Kemp recently called for a special session right after our upcoming runoff to tackle this July 1 deadline and also to tackle redistricting in light of recent Supreme Court decisions.

SPEAKER_02 24:45

So as we look forward to this special session which will no doubt be very special what are you and the Gabriel Legislative committee hoping to see come out of that well the the substitute to Senate Bill 214 that we heavily supported and we had a lot of input in drafting uh with the House leadership passed in the House and was sent to the Senate but the Senate decided not to take it up across on the floor. We're hoping that this bill that will be passed during the special session is uh in basically the same form as that Senate bill was uh it's been vetted uh the Gavrio had input as I said and we uh we very very much appreciate the input we were allowed to have with the legislature we uh just in the last four or five years uh Gavrio has had a much more uh prominent voice in how uh and how we respond to new bills that are put up upon uh the legislature and we have some very special contacts uh that we greatly appreciate that allow us to put have input into uh into shaping bills sometimes bills are written uh one way and the and and the election officials expertise can be used to perfect that bill so that it uh it it's a little bit better uh in addition Gavrigo has started uh uh using a lobbyist in Atlanta and she does a spectacular job she and her staff do a spectacular job for us uh they she's our legs on the ground in Atlanta and because we can't be there all the time so she's the bill on the ground in Atlanta to keep track of new bills and where bills are going so it's a much better arrangement than what we've had in the past.

SPEAKER_01 26:49

Yeah and I think it it as you can see the improvement with the relationships with the quality of the bills we're seeing come out and what's crossing over and what's not crossing over. And I do think I mean you know some of the Senate hearing committees or other hearing committees are happening on first day of early voting or the day of an RLA and so election officials can't be there. And so that's why I think there's so much value in associations looking at hiring lobbyists. If this is a constant issue in your state like it is here in Georgia, it is well worth the funds as a state association, I think, to have that and to have those relationships to get those bills in better shape because we've seen some pretty rough ones and uh you and your team have worked really hard to make them palatable for election officials. And so I'm I'm excited and cautiously optimistic I would say about the special session and you know we'll see what happens and as election officials do you make it work and you'll figure it out. And sometimes I said before that's I think sometimes election officials Achilles heel is because you're so great at your job, because you're able to make it work, you in turn get stuck with a lot of stuff because they just say, oh they'll figure it out they figured it out before they can handle it. So it's kind of a double-edged sword sometimes. Well thank you Tani for joining me today and sharing your insights with our listeners and thank you listeners for tuning in we'll be back next week with another episode talking with more keepers of our republic if you like this episode please share it on social media and tell your friends it's the best way for folks to find out about us.

SPEAKER_00 28:42

I hope you'll agree that our guest is indeed a keeper of the republic. If you want to learn more about how you can help keep our republic stop on over to our website keeparrepublic.org