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Letter to the Editor

Letter: Supervision of elections requires careful thought

As a resident of Milton, I attended the City Council meeting recently, and I was shocked by the large number of people there pushing the city to pull out of Fulton County elections to run our own. There was no prior notice of this topic in the local paper, emails, or AJC, yet it appeared most council minds had been made up, despite the city attorney suggesting we not rush into this. How can a decision of this magnitude be made without proper notification, investigation, evaluation and opportunity for the citizens of Milton to voice their opinions?

Not one person at the meeting presented a plan. Elections are expensive and complicated to run. Who did the research and investigation regarding this radical change?

"We'll find someplace" is not an adequate suggestion for polling places. Where will polls be located? What will our voting hours be? Who is going to handle mail-in applications and votes? Where will we find competent poll workers? Who has the credentials and experience to carry out an election, and what can we expect a reasonable salary for such a person to be? Why would we switch to labor-intensive paper ballots? How will these ballots be secured and safely stored? Where did the figures for running our own elections come from? Have they been validated? Someone "did not want to use the Dominion machines." Why not? There have been no proven instances of them causing mistakes. Why did a speaker think this would "get them away from Stacey Abrams”?

This proposal appears to be simply an emotional outburst over the results of the last election. Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger were satisfied with the integrity of the 2020 election, as was Attorney General Bill Barr. Georgia votes were counted twice and audited once with no significant errors found.

If the City of Milton seriously wishes to take on this responsibility, it must be done responsibly and investigated thoroughly, including a factual statement of costs and benefits.

I would like this letter read into the record and to express my complete opposition to this election change.

— Kyile Marshall, Milton