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 issues that could affect voters’ right to cast ballots and accurately count them.
During a hearing set to begin Tuesday, activists plan to argue that the Dominion Voting System’s touchscreen voting machines are so flawed as to be unconstitutional.
Election officials insist the system is secure and reliable and say it is up to states to decide how they conduct elections.
Georgia has been an important electoral battleground in recent years with national attention 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 voter choices and a QR code that a scanner reads to count votes.
Activists say the state should switch to signed ballots counted by scanners and also require more robust post-election audits than it already has.
US District Judge Amy Totenberg, who is overseeing the long-running case, said in an October order that she could not order the state to use signed ballots.
But activists say banning the use of touch-screen machines would effectively force the use of signed paper ballots because that’s an emergency backup provided in state law.
Activists argue that Georgia’s Dominion Voting System is vulnerable to unconstitutional abuse. AP
Wild conspiracy theories about Dominion voting machines are rife after the 2020 election, spread by allies of former President Donald Trump who say they were used to steal the election from him.
The election equipment company has fought back aggressively with litigation, most notably reaching a $787 million settlement with Fox News in April.
The trial set to begin Tuesday stems from a long-running lawsuit that preceded the suit. It was originally filed in 2017 by several individual voters and the Coalition for Good Governance, which advocates for election integrity, and targeted the outdated paperless voting system in use at the time.
Totenberg in August 2019 banned the state from using antiquated machines after that year. The state had agreed to buy new voting machines from Dominion several weeks earlier and was rushing to deploy the machines ahead of the 2020 election cycle.
Before the machines were distributed statewide, activists amended their lawsuit to target the new system.
The lawsuit was originally filed in 2017. AP
They argue the system has serious security vulnerabilities that can be exploited without detection and that the government has done little to address the problem.
Also, voters could not ensure their votes were accurately recorded because they could not read QR codes, they said.
And large, upright voting machine screens make it easy to see voters’ choices, violating voting confidentiality, they say.
Attorneys for Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger wrote in a recent court filing that he “vigorously disputes” the activists’ claims and “strongly believes” their case is “legal and non-factual.”
Experts briefed by activists said they saw no evidence that any vulnerabilities had been exploited to change the election results, but they said the concern needed to be addressed immediately to protect future elections.
Experts claim that there is no evidence that the voting system’s weaknesses have been exploited, but agree that future elections need to be protected. AP
One of them, University of Michigan computer scientist J. Alex Halderman, examined the machines from Georgia and wrote a lengthy report detailing vulnerabilities that bad actors say could be used to attack systems.
The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency, or CISA, in June 2022 issued an advisory based on Halderman’s findings urging jurisdictions that use machines to quickly mitigate vulnerabilities.
During a hearing in May, an attorney general told the judge the physical security elements recommended by CISA “are largely there.” But the secretary of state’s office has said a software update from Dominion is too complicated to install before the 2024 election.
The fact that voting system software and data were uploaded to servers and shared with an unknown number of people after unauthorized people accessed election equipment in January 2021 made it easier to plan an attack on the system, Halderman said.
Irregularities at election offices in rural Coffee County were exposed and disclosed by plaintiffs in the lawsuit.
The Fulton County racketeering indictment against Trump and 18 others includes charges against four people connected to Coffee County.
Two of them, including Trump associate lawyer Sidney Powell, have pleaded guilty after reaching a deal with prosecutors.
In several decisions during the litigation, Totenberg has made it clear that he has concerns about the voting system.
But he wrote in October that activists “bear the heavy burden of establishing constitutional violations” related to the voting system or its implementation.
David Cross, a lawyer for some of the individual voters, said the judge had only seen a sliver of their evidence so far. He said he believes he will favor them, but he doesn’t expect to see any change before Georgia’s presidential election in March.
He said changes might be possible before the general election in November if Totenberg rules quickly.
“We are hopeful but we realize it will be an uphill battle for 2024, in time,” he said, acknowledging the possibility that the state would appeal any decision in favor of the activists.
Marilyn Marks, executive director of the Coalition for Good Governance, is also optimistic ahead of the trial: “We have the facts and the science and the law on our side, and really the state has no defense.”
A representative for Raffensperger did not respond to several requests to interview someone at his office before the hearing.
Activists had planned to call the secretary of state to testify. They wanted to ask why he chose a voting system that uses QR codes that voters cannot read.
They also believe his office failed to investigate or implement appropriate safeguards after the Coffee County breach and want to ask him about it under oath.
The judge ordered him to appear over his lawyer’s objection.
But the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday ruled he need not testify, citing his status as a top official and saying the plaintiffs did not show his testimony was necessary.
“This hearing is very much in the public interest, and voters deserve to hear from Secretary Raffensperger in the hearing. It’s an insult they won’t do,” Cross said. “And it is unfair to our client who needs answers to questions at trial that only he can provide.”
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
