Georgia elections insecure statewide?

The election integrity issue in Georgia now has gone State-wide and involves more than Fulton County alone. In fact it involves elections with “sore losers” from both ends of the traditional ideological spectrum. The corruption reaches as high as the Secretary of State himself – the chief election officer. And we know that because this officer is asking a federal appellate court to quash a bench order that he testify under oath about how well – or how poorly – he has been doing his job for lo, these many years. He must testify – and explain why he refuses to fix the problem until after the Election of 2024.

Georgia elections – problems from both sides

After the Election of 2020, all attention focused on the result of the Presidential election, and after that the Senate Runoffs of January 5, 2021. In fact, President Donald J. Trump is facing criminal charges for trying to urge Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find more votes” so that he, not Joe Biden, could carry the State. Raffensperger definitely, even indignantly, refused even to investigate whether anything untoward happened in Fulton County, the State’s most populous. (Fulton is the county where lies the city of Atlanta, which hires temporary workers as Officers of Election.) Raffensperger certified Joe Biden has having carried the State. Two months later he would similarly certify the elections of two Democratic Senators, thus handing the Senate to the Democrats. (Technically the Senate was tied – but Vice-President Kamala Harris became the Queen of Tiebreakers in the 117^th Congress.)

But no one thought of a sleepy sore-loser case from the political left. Donna Curling, of the Coalition for Good Governance, sued the State after Democrats narrowly lost a special election in Georgia’s Sixth District in 2017. Brian Kemp – now the Governor – was Secretary of State at the time. When Kemp ran for Governor in 2018, Brad Raffensperger ran for Secretary of State and won. Interestingly, then-Rep. Karen Handel (R-6th), winner of that special election, lost to incumbent Rep. Lucy McBath (D-6th). But that was after Donna Curling, her Coalition, and several other Democratic voters sued the State.

Leftist voters raised questions about voting machines six years ago

Handel won that special-election runoff in June 2017 with 51.87 percent of the vote. The New York Times called her victory “demoralizing for Democrats,” but that doesn’t half say it. The Coalition for Good Governance bitterly resented the results and looked for any reason to contest them. And they found one.

The case now called Curling v. Raffensperger (1:17-cv-02989) began in the Superior Court of Fulton County, State of Georgia. It is now in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia (Atlanta Division). That’s because then-Secretary of State Kemp filed a Notice of Removal one month after Ms. Curling and her fellow plaintiffs sued in the Fulton County court.

The original State court complaint names the key issues:

1. Direct Recording (DRE) devices that produce ballots the voter cannot even read, and
2. Software vulnerabilities that a Georgia computer expert discovered, affecting the entire State election infrastructure.

The Logan Lamb investigation

Logan Lamb, a private citizen, began his investigation on August 23, 2016. His affidavit appears as Exhibit A of the original complaint. At the time, Georgia’s election infrastructure was in the hands of the Center for Election Services at Kennesaw State University. From the beginning Lamb knew something was wrong. He first discovered voter-registration information in a cache at the Google search engine. Then he accessed a download address at CES/KSU and found a treasure trove that should never have been publicly available. This included voter-registration databases, Election Management System databases, and Microsoft Windows executable and Dynamic Link Library (DLL) files. But most damning of all, he found a PDF file with election supervisor passwords.

Worse yet, the server was running a content management system called Drupal – in an obsolete version. That version had a known vulnerability to a Drupal exploit called “Drupageddon.” This article in Linux Journal describes it in detail. More to the point, the Drupal community knew about the vulnerability in 2014. Linux Journal recommended patches and “defense in depth” in 2015. Mr. Lamb’s findings clearly show that no one at CES/KSU bothered to address this issue.

Georgia refuses to act – and other vulnerabilities surface

Lamb advised Merle King, his contact at CES/KSU, of the problem. Mr. King told him verbally that the Center would work on it. But in February of 2017 Lamb found out that the system was just as vulnerable as he originally found it.

Lamb ended his affidavit with his discovery of training videos that instruct Chief Officers of Election (OOEs) to download files from the CES/KSU website, load them onto memory cards, then insert those cards into local voting machines. In short, he found how easily a hacker could spread malware throughout the entire Georgia election system. Lamb’s investigation, and that of his colleague Chris Grayson, began a process that continued with the FBI taking physical possession of the server.

The complaint refers to the Russia Hack rumors, thus confusing the issue. Why the Russians would be interested in a down-ticket special election in Georgia, the plaintiffs have never made clear. But far easier to believe, is that Georgia politics has been corrupt for years. That corruption is the source of the negligence (at least) at CES/KSU, and the refusal to address key security vulnerabilities.

But that’s not all. Apparently on April 15, 2017, an OOE in Cobb County was transporting Electronic Poll Books in his truck while shopping. Some person(s) unknown, stole the poll books.

A special election with its own problems

The Special Election itself was a “jungle primary,” and was fraught with such issues as:

1. EPB software issues prompting OOEs to send voters to different precincts – then send them back.
2. The “uploading of improper and unauthorized memory cards,” resulting in delays in results reporting.

Shades of the Arizona Midterms! Despite that, Kemp insisted on using the same system for the June runoff. The issues detailed thus far were bad enough – but ballot marking devices that produce ballots voters can’t read, compounded the problems. Furthermore, other experts knew how vulnerable those DREs could be since 2006. The plaintiffs wanted a system of paper ballots – and Georgia election officials refused.

Defendants commonly “remove” cases to federal court hoping to dismiss them. But that did not happen in this case. When the defendants filed a motion to dismiss for failure to state a federally actionable claim, the plaintiffs filed an amended complaint. Judge Amy Totenberg denied the Motion to Dismiss as moot.

More complaints, a trial date – and Raffensperger refuses to testify

The docket now runs to eleven pages covering six years of motions and countermotions – and more amended complaints. Donna Curling and two other individuals filed their Third Amended Complaint on October 15, 2019. The Coalition for Good Governance and the remaining individuals filed a Supplemental Amended Complaint the same day. On January 9, 2023, the State of Georgia filed two Motions for Summary Judgment (here and here) against these complaints. This took place after many hearings and other actions, including action by the Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Judicial Circuit.

On June 7, 2023, at the request of Donna Curling, the court unsealed the infamous Halderman Report. That Report indicates how vulnerable Dominion Voting Systems’ Ballot Marking Devices can be.

Judge Totenberg’s order denying summary judgment reveals that the original Direct Recording Electronic system, with its known issues, is no longer in use. The present Ballot Marking Device system by Dominion Voting Systems replaced it in 2020. Accordingly, the court granted summary judgment as to the original systems but denied it as to the current system. That case will go to trial on January 9, 2024.

But yesterday morning, Jim Hoft at The Gateway Pundit reported that Brad Raffensperger doesn’t want to testify under oath about the use of electronic voting machines!

James Magazine Online has further details:

Last month U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg ruled that a lawsuit against Georgia’s use of electronic voting machines must go to a non-jury trial in January. She ordered Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to defend the state’s utilization of electronic voting prior to the upcoming presidential primary election because the lawsuit questions whether Georgia’s current system of computerized voting is safe or whether it is vulnerable to potential hacking.

However, the state (spending taxpayer money) is now appealing to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to keep Raffensperger from testifying.

Says one lawyer to James Magazine Online familiar with the case: “Raffensperger selected the system, repeatedly defends the system as secure, but now can’t take an hour or so in federal court to defend it.”

At time of writing, the Notice of Appeal hasn’t made it onto CourtListener’s docket listing. Furthermore, Erick-Woods Erickson, who runs a radio program in Georgia, has never discussed this case.

Analysis

The Curling v. Raffensperger case reveals one thing above all: Georgia politics is dirtier than any outsider could have imagined. Erick-Woods Erickson thinks – or would have his listeners and subscribers believe – he knows Georgia politics. He either doesn’t, or he’s lying to his listeners and subscribers to cover up.

Erickson is not a government official; Brad Raffensperger is. But this case clearly demonstrates that the Secretary of State’s office has been corrupt for years. Brian Kemp either corrupted the process or inherited an already corrupt process. When he ran for governor, Brad Raffensperger ran for SOS to replace him. That officer has been running a corrupt system ever since, and is in a perfect position to dictate election results as he sees fit. That would include making sure that:

• Joe Biden, not Donald Trump, would carry Georgia in 2020,
• Rafael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, Democrats both, would enter the Senate, if only to spite the Republican rank and file,
• He (Raffensperger) and his friend Brian Kemp can assure themselves of endless reelections, and
• Madison Cawthorn would lose reelection after revealing the sexual shenanigans into which senior Members of the House invited him. (Recent events have vindicated Cawthorn in that sensational revelation.)

In short, Democratic and Republican rank and file alike have reason to suspect that Georgia elections are selections.

The role of Stacey Abrams becomes less clear. Nowhere in the docket of Curling v. Raffensperger does her name appear. Why not?

What Georgia voters and legislators must do about it

Nevertheless, two things are readily apparent. First, no one can be sure, anymore, of any elections in Georgia. Second, Brian Kemp and Brad Raffensperger are equally guilty of corrupting Georgia elections, or maintaining existing corruption.

Brad Raffensperger is not doing his job. Georgia voters need to vote him out as Secretary of State. If the legislature has enough collective character, they can and should remove him on impeachment. How easy any of the above will be, will depend on the upcoming trial. The Secretary of State’s attempt to avoid testifying is a sign of guilt and fear.

A judgment for the plaintiffs is not likely to result in a mandate for paper ballots. Judge Totenberg, in her order, disclaimed the authority to issue such an order. She hinted at reforms that might make the system more open. She could, for example, order Georgia to switch to a BMD that produces voter-readable ballots. That would solve one problem, at least, but leave the scanner-tabulators in place.

So voters need to make a consistent issue that electronic voting machines are inherently unsafe. All jurisdictions should move back to paper ballots. Spalding County in Georgia has already taken a step in that direction. Other counties can do the same, and maybe force the issue State-wide.

The listing of all races on one ballot would have to end, so that large teams of OOEs can count them all at once. The French do it. Americans should do the same.