Georgia Officials Tweak Standard for Marks to Count as Votes

Election officials in Georgia have approved a rule that changes the standard for how much an oval needs to be filled on absentee ballots to count as a vote. Scanners will be changed to tabulate selections where at least 20% of a bubble is filled in. If 10% or less is filled, it won’t count. Anything in between will be flagged for manual review. That will be slightly more forgiving than the factory setting for the scanners, which are being used for the first time this year as part of the state’s new voting system. But it could still discard votes where people mistakenly use a check mark or X.