ATLANTA – Election integrity activists want a federal judge to order Georgia to stop using its current election system, saying it is vulnerable to attacks and has operational problems that could cost voters their right to cast a ballot as count accurately.
During a trial set to begin Tuesday, activists plan to argue that Dominion Voting Systems’ touchscreen voting machines are so defective that they are unconstitutional.
Election officials insist the system is secure and reliable and say it is up to the state to decide how it conducts elections.
Georgia has become a key electoral battleground in recent years and national attention has focused on its elections.
The election system used statewide by nearly all in-person voters includes touch-screen voting machines that print ballots with a human-readable summary of voters’ selections and a QR code that a scanner reads to count the votes.
Activists say the state should switch to paper ballots marked by hand and counted by scanners and also needs much more robust post-election audits than those that currently exist.
U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg, who is overseeing the long-running case, said in an October order that she cannot order the state to use hand-marked ballots.
But advocates say banning the use of touchscreen machines would effectively force the use of hand-marked paper ballots because that is the emergency backup provided in state law.
Activists argue that Georgia’s Dominion voting systems are unconstitutionally vulnerable to abuse. AP
Wild conspiracy theories about Dominion voting machines proliferated in the wake of the 2020 election, spread by allies of former President Donald Trump who said they were used to steal the election from him.
The election equipment company has aggressively fought back with litigation, notably reaching a $787 million settlement with Fox News in April.
The trial set to begin Tuesday arises from a lawsuit that long predates those claims. It was originally introduced in 2017 by several individual voters and the Good Governance Coalition, which advocates for election integrity, and took aim at the antiquated paperless voting system used at the time.
In August 2019, Totenberg banned the state from using outdated machines beyond that year. The state had agreed to purchase new voting machines from Dominion a few weeks earlier and rushed to deploy them ahead of the 2020 election cycle.
Before the machines were distributed statewide, activists modified their lawsuit to target the new system.
The lawsuit was originally filed in 2017. AP
They argue that the system has serious security vulnerabilities that could be exploited without detection and that the state has done little to address those problems.
Additionally, voters can’t be sure their votes are recorded accurately because they can’t read the QR code, they say.
And the large vertical screens on voting machines make it easy to see voters’ selections, violating the right to secrecy of the vote, they say.
Lawyers for Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger wrote in a recent court filing that he “strongly disputes” the activists’ claims and “strongly believes” their case “lacks legal and factual basis.”
Experts hired by activists have said they have seen no evidence that any vulnerabilities have been exploited to change the outcome of an election, but they say concerns must be addressed immediately to protect future elections.
Experts say there is no evidence that vulnerabilities in the voting system have been exploited, but they agree that future elections need to be protected. AP
One of them, University of Michigan computer scientist J. Alex Halderman, examined a Georgia machine and wrote an extensive report detailing vulnerabilities that he said bad actors could use to attack the system.
The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, in June 2022 published an advisory based on Halderman’s findings that urged jurisdictions that use the machines to quickly mitigate the vulnerabilities.
During a hearing in May, an attorney for the state told the judge that the physical security elements recommended by CISA were “largely in place.” But the secretary of state’s office has said a Dominion software update is too complicated to install before the 2024 election.
The fact that voting system software and data were uploaded to a server and shared with an unknown number of people after unauthorized people accessed election equipment in January 2021 makes it even easier to plan an attack. to the system, Halderman said.
That violation at the elections office in rural Coffee County was discovered and exposed by the plaintiffs in the lawsuit.
A sprawling Fulton County racketeering indictment against Trump and 18 others included charges against four people connected to Coffee County.
Two of them, including Trump ally lawyer Sidney Powell, pleaded guilty after reaching deals with prosecutors.
In several rulings during the litigation, Totenberg has made clear that he has concerns about the voting system.
But he wrote in October that activists “bear the heavy burden of establishing a constitutional violation” related to the voting system or its implementation.
David Cross, a lawyer for some of the individual voters, said the judge has so far seen only a small portion of their evidence. He said he believes she will rule in her favor, but that he doesn’t expect to see any changes before Georgia’s presidential primary in March.
He said changes could be possible before the November general election if Totenberg governs quickly.
“We are hopeful, but we recognize that it is an uphill fight for 2024, just for the moment,” he said, acknowledging the likelihood that the state will appeal any ruling in favor of the activists.
Marilyn Marks, executive director of the Good Governance Coalition, was similarly optimistic before the trial: “We have the facts, the science and the law on our side, and the state really has no defense.”
A representative for Raffensperger did not respond to multiple requests to interview someone from his office before the trial.
The activists had planned to call the Secretary of State to testify. They wanted to ask him why he chose a voting system that uses QR codes that voters can’t read.
They also believe his office failed to investigate and implement proper safeguards after the Coffee County breach and wanted to ask him about it under oath.
The judge ordered him to appear despite the objections of his lawyers.
But the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Friday that he does not have to testify, citing his status as a senior official and saying the plaintiffs did not show that his testimony was necessary.
“This trial greatly affects the public interest and voters deserve to hear from Secretary Raffensperger at trial. It’s a travesty that they don’t do it,” Cross said. “And it is unfair to our clients who need answers to questions at trial that only he can provide.”
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Source: vtt.edu.vn