LAWRENCEVILLE, GA—Insisting that the machine was operating exactly as intended, Georgia election worker Mitchell Hamlin reportedly assured a black man on Tuesday that the ballot scanner was supposed to sound like a shredder. “Don’t you worry, it’s designed to sound like it’s ripping your ballot into thousands of tiny pieces,” the election worker informed the middle-aged African American resident, adding that it was merely a coincidence that several white voters in front of him had been directed to insert their ballots into a different scanner. “You should absolutely be hearing a constant whirring and shredding sound—that’s the machine’s way of telling you that your vote counts. And that bucket below where the ballot scanner is dropping strips of paper? That’s simply the machine producing a receipt so we know it went through to the right place. Congratulations, you definitely voted today.” At press time, Hamlin stated that he could also confirm the man’s registration for the 2020 election if he just handed over his driver’s license.

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