Opening statements are scheduled for Tuesday as the trial of a long-running legal challenge to the constitutionality of Georgia's election system begins in federal court in Atlanta.
Adequate election activists argue that the system is vulnerable to attack and suffers from operational problems that place unconstitutional burdens on people's fundamental right to vote and have their votes accurately counted. ing. State election officials say they have put in place appropriate safeguards and the system is reliable.
The lawsuit stems from a lawsuit originally filed in 2017 by individual voters and election integrity activists, including the Coalition for Good Governance, which advocates for the security and integrity of elections. It initially targeted older paperless voting machines in use at the time, but has been modified to target newer voting machines in use across the state since 2020.
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The new system, developed by Dominion Voting Systems, includes a touchscreen voting machine that prints a ballot with a human-readable summary of the voter's choices and a QR code that a scanner reads to count the vote. Masu. Activists argue that the current system is less secure and reliable than the old one, and are asking U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg to order the state to stop using it.
Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has repeatedly defended the program and dismissed concerns raised by activists as unfounded. He and his lawyers have lumped the plaintiffs in the case in with supporters of former President Donald Trump who have pushed false claims of election fraud after the 2020 election, including outlandish claims about Dominion voting machines. There were times when I ended up
Touchscreen voting machines and printers inside a voting booth in Paulding, Georgia.
“Georgia's election security measures are among the best. To cast doubt on Georgia's elections, as the plaintiffs and objectors are doing, is in fact to cast doubt on all elections. It is dangerous. And that's wrong,” said Mike Hassinger, a spokesman for the Secretary of State's office. A statement emailed Monday. “Our office continues to defeat election deniers in the courts and at elections, and ultimately we will prevail in this case.”
Totenberg, who has expressed concerns about the state's election system and its implementation, said in a footnote to his October order that the evidence in the lawsuit “does not suggest that the plaintiffs are conspiracy theorists of any kind.” I wrote. Cybersecurity experts and computer scientists have submitted testimony and affidavits on behalf of the plaintiffs throughout the long course of this litigation. ”
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One of those experts, J. Alex Halderman, a computer science expert at the University of Michigan, investigated voting machines in Georgia and identified vulnerabilities he allegedly discovered that could affect election results. wrote a lengthy report detailing how it could be used to change the In June 2022, the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) released recommendations based on Halderman's findings, urging jurisdictions that use the machines to quickly mitigate vulnerabilities.
Dominion, which has consistently maintained that its equipment is accurate and safe, issued a software update last spring that it says addressed concerns. Raffensperger said it would be impossible to do it before the 2024 election cycle, given the time and effort required to install that update on all voting equipment.
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Plaintiffs and their experts say they see no evidence that Georgia's elections were manipulated by bad actors, but argue that existing security flaws need to be addressed to prevent future damage. ing. They say the need for action became more urgent after an unauthorized person accessed voting equipment at a county election office in rural Georgia in January 2021 and distributed software and data online. claims.
Plaintiffs insist on using handwritten paper ballots that are counted using a scanner. Totenberg already wrote in October that he could not order states to switch to a system that uses hand-marked paper ballots. But she wrote that she could order “realistic and sound corrective policy measures,” such as eliminating QR codes on ballots, strengthening cybersecurity measures, and increasing auditing.
