Georgia – Page 7 – The Voting News

Georgia Prosecutor Has Donald Trump in Her Sights, and She’s Not Stopping | Norman Eisen and Amy Lee Copeland/The New York Times

July 29, 2022

Now that the House Jan. 6 committee’s initial hearings have concluded, this is a useful time to evaluate their actual impact. For that, we should look not to Washington but well south of the Capitol, to Atlanta. That’s because the hearings have turbocharged the investigation by the Fulton County district attorney, Fani Willis, into possible election interference and offenses by Donald Trump and his allies. Any charges in that investigation may define a big part of the committee’s legacy, even as it looks to extend its work into the fall. Normally, the primary question after congressional revelations like those we have heard would be whether there would be federal charges, as in Watergate. Here, the Justice Department may be contemplating possible actions, but Ms. Willis is further along. Her flurry of target letters to Georgians who formed an alternate slate of 2020 presidential electors strongly suggests she is considering charges. Ms. Willis has operated with calculated urgency since she opened her investigation in February 2021. She has moved from building a prosecution team and conducting voluntary interviews to convening a special grand jury to issuing those target letters (at least 16 of them) to the Republican electors who, despite Mr. Trump’s election loss in the state, covertly met to cast votes for him and submit an alternate electoral slate on Dec. 14.

Full Article: Opinion | This Georgia Prosecutor Has Donald Trump in Her Sights, and She’s Not Stopping – The New York Times

New Georgia election law allows any resident to challenge another voter’s eligibility | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

July 29, 2022

Bearing long lists of voters’ names, a determined group of Republicans is asking local election boards to cancel thousands of Georgia voter registrations, using a new power bestowed by the state’s voting law. These amateur operatives are trying to purge the registrations of people who they suspect have moved away based on voter lists, address records or property tax documents. They’re relying on Georgia’s law passed last year in the wake of Donald Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election that allows any voter to challenge the eligibility of an unlimited number of their neighbors, an effort that’s taking place outside the routine government-run process of removing people who have moved or died. It’s voter against voter, with conservatives taking matters into their own hands to police Georgia’s voter list. No fraud has been proved among registrants who moved from Georgia or used P.O. boxes as their addresses. These aggressive efforts to cancel voters jeopardized eligible voters such as Tracy Taylor, who is homeless and registered to vote at the address of a post office near historically Black colleges on Atlanta’s Westside. “If I had a residential address, I would be using it,” Taylor told the Fulton County elections board this month. “I’m trying to get back to a normal life.”

Full Article: New Georgia election law allows any resident to challenge another voter’s eligibility

Georgia: Driven by voter skepticism, several counties seek election audits | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

July 22, 2022

The elections board in rural Pickens County voted Tuesday to ask a judge to unseal ballots from this year’s primary, the latest attempt in heavily Republican areas to audit Georgia election results. If a court agrees, election workers would conduct a hand count of over 7,600 ballots cast in Republican races for governor and secretary of state to check the accuracy of results tabulated by voting computers. Election board members said they sought the audit in response to residents who distrust Georgia’s election equipment, manufactured by Dominion Voting Systems, which uses touchscreens to print out paper ballots. “I implore this board to search your hearts in the name of voter confidence and transparency, and to not allow the fear of the unknown to stop you from doing what is right,” Republican board member Mike Carver said before the vote.

Full Article: Elections boards in several rural Georgia counties pursue audits

Georgia: Lindsey Graham Tries Again to Quash Election-Probe Subpoena | Margaret Newkirk/Bloomberg

July 15, 2022

U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham is trying again to avoid testifying before a special purpose grand jury in Fulton County, Georgia, filing a motion to quash his subpoena in a South Carolina federal court. The grand jury, convened by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, is investigating President Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the Georgia results of the 2020 federal election. Graham made two phone calls to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in the weeks following the election, according to the July 5 subpoena. At the time, Raffensperger said publicly that he believed Graham was urging him to find a way to throw out legitimately cast mail-in ballots. Graham has denied that. Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney rejected Graham’s first attempt to quash the subpoena on July 11 and ordered him to appear before the grand jury Aug. 2. Graham filed the new request to quash the subpoena July 12 in Anderson, South Carolina. He claims he was acting in his role as a US Senator and can’t be compelled to testify. He claims in the filing that Willis is asking him to testify in person for seven weeks which would interfere with his Senate duties. A spokesman for Willis’ office couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.

Full Article: Lindsey Graham Tries Again to Quash Georgia Election-Probe Subpoena – Bloomberg

Georgia: ‘Extremely confident’: Cherokee County finishes election audit | Shannon Ballew/Cherokee Tribune and Ledger-News

July 8, 2022

Source: ‘Extremely confident’: Cherokee finishes election audit | Local News | tribuneledgernews.com

An end to ballot bar codes? Georgia election officials consider design changes | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

July 1, 2022

When Georgia began using computer-printed paper ballots in 2020, they raised a new issue: Votes are scanned from bar codes that are unreadable by the human eye. The inability to verify that the text of a ballot matches the contents of the bar code raised concerns from election integrity advocates, who said voters can’t be sure that their ballots were counted as they intended. They’ve warned that bar codes could be manipulated by hackers, though there’s no evidence that has ever happened. Now, state election officials are weighing whether to replace bar codes with ballots that display candidate names with ovals next to them. A U.S. cybersecurity agency, in a report that found vulnerabilities in Georgia’s voting equipment, recently said local governments can choose to eliminate bar codes. While no decision has been made to change the ballot design seen by every in-person voter in Georgia, the secretary of state’s office has been discussing the idea for over a year, Chief Operating Officer Gabriel Sterling said. Election officials are considering security, costs and challenges of printing a longer ballot. Georgia began using printed-out paper ballots in 2020, ending 18 years of electronic voting by purchasing $138 million worth of voting equipment manufactured by Dominion Voting Systems. Paper ballots provide a way to hand count and audit results. The voting system relies on a combination of touchscreens and printers, which produce a sheet of paper that includes a bar code — called a QR code — along with a human-readable list of the voter’s choices. Then, voters insert their ballots into optical scanning machines that read the bar code, which counts as the official vote.

Full Article: An end to ballot bar codes? Georgia election officials consider design changes

Georgia: Subpoenas seek info on attempt to copy election data in Coffee County | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

July 1, 2022

Subpoenas sent this month are seeking evidence of whether election conspiracy theorists gained unauthorized access to Georgia voting equipment and copied sensitive files in Coffee County after the 2020 election. The subpoenas demand documents including ballot images, election data, computer software and the identities of who funded the endeavor. The subpoenas, obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, were issued by plaintiffs in an ongoing election security lawsuit against Georgia. In addition, the secretary of state’s office recently opened a separate investigation into allegations of a breach in Coffee County, located about 200 miles south of Atlanta. The Georgia allegation is the latest example of attempts to gain access to voting computers after Republican Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, similar to incidents in Colorado, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Trump supporters claimed there was fraud and blamed elections equipment manufactured by Dominion Voting Systems. Recounts, court cases and investigations have repeatedly upheld the election, which Democrat Joe Biden won by less than 12,000 votes in Georgia. Dominion has sued over the unfounded allegations. A year and a half after the presidential election, it remains unclear whether Coffee County election computers were compromised by individuals pursuing evidence of fraud. Flight records provided by FlightAware.com show a plane from Atlanta visited the county on Jan. 7, 2021 — the day after the Capitol riot in Washington.

Full Article: Subpoenas seek info on attempt to copy election data in Coffee County

Georgia secretary of state Raffensperger, defied Trump in 2020, but voting rights groups slam policies | Catherine Buchaniec, Annie Klingenberg and Julia Shapero/USA Today

June 24, 2022

It started with a phone call in early 2021. Soon the money flowed in, the media descended and what would typically be a sleepy race for the chief election official in Georgia quickly became one of the most-watched races of the 2022 primary elections. When Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger defeated a congressman aligned with former President Donald Trump in the Republican primary in May, many hailed his victory as a vindication over lies that the 2020 presidential election results were fraudulent. And Raffensperger’s testimony before the House committee probing the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol attack burnished that view for many, as he testified about the threats he and his family have received because he refused Trump’s demands to “find” votes and overturn the state’s 2020 election results. But Democrats and various voting rights groups say Raffensperger’s no hero — he’s an official with a history of supporting voter suppression policies. There was “a voter suppressor versus an election denier in the primary,” said Jena Griswold, the chair of the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State, ahead of the May 24 election. Secretary of state elections rarely gain national attention. But the job has taken on new significance as Trump-endorsed candidates espouse rhetoric doubting the validity of the 2020 election. “They make the races an existential threat to democracy,” Griswold said.

Full Article: Raffensperger, Georgia secretary of state, faces scrutiny on voting

Georgia: Court filing offers new evidence of post-election breach in Coffee County | Emma Brown and Amy Gardner/The Washington Post

June 17, 2022

A cybersecurity executive who has aided efforts by election deniers to investigate the 2020 vote said in a recent court document that he had “forensically examined” the voting system used in Coffee County, Ga. The assertion by executive Benjamin Cotton that he examined the county’s voting system is the strongest indication yet that the security of election equipment there may have been compromised following Donald Trump’s loss. Representatives of Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) said in April that while his office had investigated several election-related issues in Coffee County, none appeared to amount to a breach of equipment. In May, The Washington Post reported that former county elections official Misty Hampton had opened her offices to a man who was active in the election-denier movement to help investigate after the 2020 vote. Recounting the incident to The Post, Hampton said she did not know what the man, bail bond business owner Scott Hall, and his team did in her office. In the new document, a sworn declaration filed Wednesday in a civil case in federal court in Arizona, Cotton, founder of the digital forensics firm CyFIR, wrote that he had examined Dominion Voting Systems used in several jurisdictions. Among them were Coffee County, Mesa County, Colo., and Maricopa County, Ariz., where he worked as a contractor on a Republican-commissioned ballot review.

Full Article: Court filing offers new evidence of post-election breach in Coffee County, Georgia – The Washington Post

Georgia Republican candidates call for recount in Chatham County, statewide after Dekalb County recount | Will Peebles/Savannah Morning News

June 10, 2022

A trio of Savannah Republicans who lost their primary election races on May 24 are seeking a recount. Chatham Elections Supervisor Billy Wooten says he won’t be asking the secretary of state for one. Chatham Board of Elections candidates Robin Greco and Jennifer Salandi have joined fellow Savannahian Jeanne Seaver, who ran for lieutenant governor, in her call for a recount. The push follows a recount in Dekalb County prompted by voting equipment issues. Chatham did not have the same scope of issues seen in Dekalb. Seaver, who finished last in the lieutenant governor primary with 7.5% of the vote, has formally petitioned Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger for a statewide recount. Contacted Friday, Seaver said that if there were discrepancies in Dekalb, the Secretary of State’s office has an obligation to investigate whether there were similar issues with the Dominion voting system machines statewide. It’s not about her winning or losing, she said. “It’s all about the right thing to do. They did it in one county because someone requested it. What about the 158 other counties?” Seaver said.

Full Article: GA Republicans question Dominion voting machines, call for recount

Georgia Candidate Who Appeared to Get Few Votes Was Actually in 1st Place | Neil Vigdor/The New York Times

June 10, 2022

A candidate for a county office near Atlanta was vaulted into first place after a series of technical errors made it appear that she had not mustered a single Election Day vote in a vast majority of precincts in last month’s Democratic primary, election officials determined. The candidate, Michelle Long Spears, was shortchanged by 3,792 votes in the District 2 primary for the Board of Commissioners in DeKalb County, Ga., that was held on May 24, according to newly-certified results released on Friday. In all but four of the district’s nearly 40 precincts, no Election Day votes were recorded for Ms. Spears, who had received more than 2,000 early votes. She said that she immediately alerted state and county election authorities. “When I visited several precincts (including my own) after Election Day and saw ZERO votes reported for myself, I was shocked and knew that wasn’t accurate,” Ms. Spears said in a text message. After conducting a hand count over the Memorial Day weekend and auditing those returns, election officials determined that they had drastically underreported the vote totals for Ms. Spears.

Full Article: Georgia Candidate Who Appeared to Get Few Votes Was Actually in 1st Place – The New York Times

Georgia: Revealed: election conspiracy theorists work as election officials across state | Justin Glawe/The Guardian

June 3, 2022

The effort to install local election officials who promote Donald Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen has seen particular success in the crucial swing state of Georgia, where at least eight county election officials are promoters of the falsehood, a Guardian investigation has found. The officials span the state, from suburban counties outside Atlanta to rural counties near the Tennessee and Alabama borders. All have substantial power over the administration of local, state and national elections in their counties, often with little oversight beyond scantly attended public meetings and small-town newspapers. … The investigation looked at seven counties out of 159, meaning the number of election officials who support election conspiracy theories could be much higher. “These disturbing facts bring to light what we’ve known for a while: support for the big lie is growing – the result of powerful political actors stoking a dangerous fire,” the voting rights group New Georgia Project said in a statement.

Full Article: Revealed: election conspiracy theorists work as election officials across Georgia | Donald Trump | The Guardian

Georgia election board sidesteps calls for paper ballots while possible server breach under investigation | Doug Richards/11alive.com

May 27, 2022

A possible election security compromise in south Georgia apparently won’t lead to any changes in the way the state conducts this month’s primary or subsequent runoff. The state election board chairman says the incident is under investigation but there’s no evidence yet to take emergency action. The issue is whether a possible election security breach in south Georgia compromises the state’s new voting system statewide. The state’s voting system runs on computer software shared by voting machines in every Georgia county. Now, election officials say they are looking into a possible security breach in Coffee County, where a backer of former President Donald Trump allegedly got access to an election server and made images, or copies, of the code that runs it. “This is a single point of failure that is a nightmare for cybersecurity experts,” said one of Georgia’s foremost cybersecurity experts. Dr. Rich DeMillo, head of Georgia Tech’s cybersecurity program, says it potentially threatens voting systems statewide. “Someone who wants to install malware on a server normally has to do this at arms length. You’ve given now (potential hackers) the ability to directly access the machine and do it,” DeMillo told 11Alive News.

Full Article: Paper ballots unlikely after election server breach allegation | 11alive.com

Georgia: Miscount in DeKalb County race caused by voting computer programming errors | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

May 25, 2022

A programming mistake caused an inaccurate vote count in a DeKalb County Commission race, election officials said Thursday night. A recount will begin Saturday morning, when county election workers will re-scan all paper ballots from that commission district’s 40 precincts. The error resulted in zero election day votes for Michelle Long Spears in all but seven precincts. Spears is currently in third place, outside of a runoff, but the recount could change the outcome. No other races were affected. The problem arose from programming changes to voting equipment to remove a candidate from the ballot after he withdrew from the race for DeKalb Commission District 2, according to the secretary of state’s office. Paper ballots printed from Georgia’s voting touchscreens will ensure accurate results, state Elections Director Blake Evans said. “Georgia’s election system works and is secure,” Evans said. “DeKalb’s elections team is setting an example for the rest of the state of how to properly audit and review results before certification.”

Full Article: Botched vote count in DeKalb race caused by Georgia programming mistake

Georgia county under scrutiny after claim of post-election breach | Emma Brown and Amy Gardner/The Washington Post

May 20, 2022

A former elections supervisor in rural Coffee County, Ga., has told The Washington Post that she opened her offices to a businessman active in the election-denier movement to help investigate results she did not trust in the weeks after President Donald Trump’s 2020 defeat. Trump had carried the conservative county by 40 points, but elections supervisor Misty Hampton said she remained suspicious of Joe Biden’s win in Georgia. Hampton made a video that went viral soon after the election, claiming to show that Dominion Voting System machines, the ones used in her county, could be manipulated. She said in interviews that she hoped the Georgia businessman who visited later, Scott Hall, and others who accompanied him could help identify vulnerabilities and prove “that this election was not done true and correct.” Hampton said she could not remember when the visit occurred or what Hall and the others did when they were there. She said they did not enter a room that housed the county’s touch-screen voting machines, but she said she did not know whether they entered the room housing the election management system server, the central computer used to tally election results. “I’m not a babysitter,” she told The Post. Hall, who owns a bail bond business, did not respond to requests for comment.

Full Article: Coffee County, Georgia, under scrutiny after claim of post-election breach – The Washington Post

Georgia: Judge says Perdue’s election fraud claims are ‘conjecture and paranoia’ | David Wickert/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

May 13, 2022

A Fulton County judge has rejected former U.S. Sen. David Perdue’s request to inspect ballots from the November 2020 election, saying his evidence of voting fraud amounts to “conjecture and paranoia.” Perdue’s lawsuit claimed fraud had cost him a chance to defeat Democrat Jon Ossoff in November 2020. The two candidates advanced to a January 2021 runoff, which Ossoff won. Perdue’s lawsuit cited some of the same discredited allegations of fraud that former President Donald Trump has repeatedly said allowed Joe Biden to win the presidential election in Georgia. On Wednesday, Superior Court Judge Robert C.I. McBurney dismissed the lawsuit and Perdue’s request for a “forensic inspection” of absentee ballots. The judge said Perdue’s claims consisted of “speculation, conjecture and paranoia — sufficient fodder for talk shows, op-ed pieces and social media platforms, but far short of what would legally justify a court taking such action.” Perdue issued a statement criticizing the ruling. “Today’s ruling is another example of how the establishment continues to cover up what happened in 2020, and we will vigorously appeal the decision,” he said. “Courts across the country have been dismissing cases not based on evidence, but because of procedural nonsense.”

Full Article: Judge: Perdue’s election fraud claims are ‘conjecture and paranoia’

Georgia early voting check-in system restored after outage | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

May 6, 2022

Georgia’s voter check-in system was restored Thursday morning after a statewide outage had caused problems with early voting in the primary election, according to the secretary of state’s office. Voters were still able to cast ballots during the outage, but poll workers had to use backup procedures to verify their registration information before they were allowed to vote. The problem was caused by a “glitch” after primary and backup servers automatically restarted Wednesday night, said a spokesman for the secretary of state’s office. Restarting the servers Thursday morning appeared to fix the issue, The disruption affected Georgia’s voter registration system, called ElectioNet, which is used to check in voters at early voting locations during the primary. The secretary of state’s office announced plans to replace the ElectioNet system earlier this year, but the new computer system wasn’t ready in time for the primary.

Full Article: Georgia early voting check-in system restored after outage

Georgia restores automatic voter registration after sharp decrease in 2021 | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

April 29, 2022

The sudden drop in voter registrations stood out to Richard Barron, Fulton County’s former elections director, when he first noticed it in February 2021. Without explanation, the number of registration applications had dramatically declined, from 35,000 the previous February to less than 6,000 in the same month a year later. Similar decreases happened across Georgia throughout last year. Barron suspected something had changed with Georgia’s automatic registration program, which was supposed to sign up eligible voters by default at driver’s licenses offices unless they opt out. He said his staff called and emailed the secretary of state’s office several times but didn’t find answers. It turned out the Georgia Department of Driver Services had shut off automatic voter registration when it redesigned its website early last year as part of a broader technology overhaul. Instead of registering drivers by default, the new website required drivers to click “Yes” or “No” when asked whether they wanted to sign up.

Full Article: Georgia restores automatic voter registration after sharp decrease in 2021

Georgia election worker who was target of false 2020 accusations receives Profile in Courage Award | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

April 25, 2022

A Fulton County elections worker targeted by harassment and conspiracy theories after the 2020 election, Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, has won the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award. Moss is one of five people being honored for their roles in protecting democracy. The recipients were announced Thursday by the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation. Former President Donald Trump and his supporters falsely accused Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, of rigging the election by counting absentee ballots stored in hidden “suitcases” at State Farm Arena on election night. Election investigations and publicly available videos showed no improprieties. Even after election officials debunked fraud allegations, Moss faced death threats and racist taunts, forcing her to go into hiding. “Despite the onslaught of random, undeserved, and malicious attacks, Moss continues to serve in the Fulton County Department of Registration & Elections doing the hard and unseen work to run our democracy,” the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation said.

Full Article: Georgia election worker who was target of false 2020 accusations receives Profile in Courage Award

Georgia: Voting rights trial opens with disputes over election hurdles | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

April 18, 2022

A major voting rights trial launched Monday with allegations that Georgia has erected “a series of roadblocks” to casting a ballot, and a response that the case attempts “a wholesale attack” on the state’s election system. Opening statements by each side marked a stark contrast in the federal trial, where a judge will hear testimony over the next month to determine if Georgia’s elections procedures illegally burden eligible voters. It’s the first voting rights case to make it to trial in Atlanta’s federal courts in at least a decade, the culmination of a lawsuit filed by allies of Democrat Stacey Abrams after her close loss to Republican Brian Kemp in the 2018 race for governor. As the trial begins 3 1/2 years later, Abrams and Kemp are again running for governor, but a decision in the case isn’t expected until after Georgia’s May 24 primary.

Full Article: Opening of Georgia voting rights trial focuses on ‘exact match’ rules

Georgia: Many harried election officials are eyeing the exit. But new workers are stepping up | Stephen Fowler/NPR

April 11, 2022

When Dorothy Glisson, president of Georgia’s association of election officials, scanned the room at a conference last month to highlight years of service in voting, there were only a few grizzled veterans with decades of experience under their belts. In fact, the bustling convention center near the campus of the University of Georgia was teeming with relatively fresh faces from across the state. “I would say that we’ve probably got as many first-time attendees as we do all of the others put together, so that tells us something,” Glisson said to a crowd of about 500. The event brought together local board members, election supervisors and staff for three days of training — on everything from conducting post-election audits to verifying absentee ballots under newly passed rules — before frenzied preparations for the state’s May 24 primary election begin in earnest. And the new faces in the crowd underscored that while many election workers are eyeing the exits amid a contentious national environment, a new crop of public servants is stepping in to fill the void.

Full Article: Meet some of the new people stepping up to run elections : NPR

Georgia senators vote to strip controversial parts of elections bill | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

April 4, 2022

A Georgia Senate committee voted unanimously Tuesday to remove every contentious proposal from a broad elections bill, discarding plans for GBI fraud investigations, paper ballot inspections and funding limitations. The decision to advance a stripped-down bill sets up a showdown in the final days of this year’s legislative session, when lawmakers will attempt to negotiate a final version. The Senate Ethics Committee scrapped much of the bill after hearing testimony Monday from several county election officials who opposed strict ballot handling rules and restrictions on outside donations from nonprofit organizations. One elections supervisor called its requirements little more than “security theater.” Senators shrank the 39-page bill to a two-page measure Tuesday, leaving only a requirement that businesses give workers up to two hours off to vote either on election day or during three weeks of early voting. Under current law, workers are only entitled to time off to vote on election day.

Full Article: Georgia senators vote to strip controversial parts of elections bill

Georgia Local Election Officials Oppose G.O.P. Election Bill | Maya King and Nick Corasaniti/The New York Times

March 25, 2022

A year ago, when Georgia Republicans passed a mammoth law of election measures and voting restrictions, many local election officials felt frustrated and sidelined, as their concerns about resources, ballot access and implementation went largely ignored. This year, Republicans have returned with a new bill — and the election officials are pushing back. A bipartisan coalition of county-level election administrators — the people who carry out the day-to-day work of running elections — is speaking out against the latest Republican measure. At a legislative hearing on Monday, they warned that the proposal would create additional burdens on a dwindling force of election workers and that the provisions could lead to more voter intimidation. “You’re going to waste time, and you’re going to cause me to lose poll workers,” said Joel Natt, a Republican member of the Forsyth County board of elections, referring to a provision in the bill that he said would force workers to count hundreds of blank sheets of paper. “I have 400 poll workers that work for our board. That is 400 people that I could see telling me after May, ‘Have a nice life,’ and it’s hard enough to keep them right now.” Among other provisions, the bill would expand the reach of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation over election crimes; limit private funding of elections; empower partisan poll watchers; and establish new requirements for tracking absentee ballots as they are verified and counted.

Full Article: Local Election Officials in Georgia Oppose G.O.P. Election Bill – The New York Times

Georgia: Investigation blames human error for issues in Fulton County election audit | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

March 18, 2022

Georgia election investigators reported Wednesday that they found repeated human errors during an unofficial hand recount of the 2020 presidential election in Fulton County, but the overall results appeared to be correct. The State Election Board then voted 3-1 to refer the case to the attorney general’s office for further investigation into whether Fulton’s elections office violated election rules. Investigators reviewed Fulton’s recount in response to concerns raised by Gov. Brian Kemp, who told the board in a November letter that he had vetted allegations of inconsistencies in the hand recount, part of a statewide audit of all 5 million ballots cast. Overall, the results of the hand recount — both in Fulton and all of Georgia — were similar to two machine counts, showing that Democrat Joe Biden won the state by about 12,000 votes against Republican Donald Trump. Two Houston County residents had claimed to Kemp there were batches of Fulton ballots with 100% of votes for Biden, duplicated batches and incorrect data. The investigation indicated that the allegations can be explained by mistakes by election workers during the first-ever statewide election audit, which included a review of over 525,000 Fulton paper ballots.

Full Article: State Election Board advances case alleging problems in Fulton recount

Georgia: Poll closure plan defeated in rural Lincoln County | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

March 11, 2022

Election officials in rural Lincoln County on Wednesday voted against closing all seven of the county’s polling places, a plan that would have replaced them with one new central voting location. The unanimous decision to keep every polling place open followed months of protests and petition drives objecting to the proposal, saying it would limit voter access in the county, located north of Augusta. “The voters of Lincoln County spoke loud and clear on the proposals to consolidate polling locations,” said Cindy Battles of the Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda, a voting rights group that helped organize opposition to the poll closure plan. “We are incredibly happy the board of elections listened to them.” The elections board backed down from the poll closure idea in response to resistance that began late last year. Voting rights organizations gathered hundreds of signatures on petitions in January that blocked some of the poll closures from moving forward. Under Georgia law, a petition signed by at least 20% of registered voters in a precinct can prevent its closure.

Full Article: Rural Georgia county votes to keep all precincts open after protests

Georgia’s race to oversee voting pits an election denier against an election defender | Miles Parks/NPR

March 4, 2022

Over cheeseburgers, onion rings and fried chicken salads, people shared what they’d heard. Something “crooked” was going on across the country. In California, for instance, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom hadn’t actually won his recall election last year by the 3 million votes that was reported. “They found boxes of ballots months later, all for the other guy,” someone whispered. The TV over the bar at the Flying Machine restaurant in Lawrenceville, Ga., was turned to Fox News, and Republicans gathered to talk about what they’ve been talking about for much of the past year and a half: voter fraud. “How many feel that the 2020 elections were a little sketchy?!” asked DeKalb County GOP Chair Marci McCarthy, to cheers. “Everybody should be raising their hands!” The restaurant event was the 12th and final stop in a three-day “election integrity” tour put on by one of the nation’s preeminent election deniers, Rep. Jody Hice, R-Ga. Hice objected to the 2020 election results at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, just hours after it had been stormed by a violent pro-Trump mob. And now, the former pastor is running to oversee voting in Georgia as the secretary of state.

Full Article: Georgia secretary of state race pits Hice against Raffensperger : NPR

Transparency or conspiracy? Bill seeks public ballot reviews | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

February 18, 2022

It was a rare bipartisan election proposal: Make paper ballots public in Georgia so anyone who doubted election results could see for themselves. But a bill to make that idea a reality quickly sparked resistance. Opponents fear the legislation would enable endless “audits” driven by losing candidates who will never accept defeat, turning any ambiguity or mistake into the next stolen election claim. Democrats withdrew support for the measure following criticism from Fair Fight Action, a voting rights group that Democrat Stacey Abrams started, concerned that the proposal would do more to undermine elections than increase confidence in them. Georgia election officials conducted three ballot counts and repeated investigations of the 2020 election, finding isolated problems but no widespread fraud. Nonetheless, former President Donald Trump and some of his supporters have continued to spread conspiracy theories about the results. The bill’s backers say it would allow the public to verify elections, identify errors, detect counting mistakes and hold election officials accountable. Republican state Rep. Shaw Blackmon, the bill’s lead sponsor, said transparency is the key to building trust in elections. “This bill would give voters more confidence and help them understand more thoroughly our process,” said Blackmon, who represents Bonaire. “Both parties wanted a paper ballot because people are more comfortable working with real documents. And this makes those documents open to public inspection.”

Full Article: Bill would bring public ballot inspections to Georgia

Georgia: Cybersecurity agency reviews hacking risk to voting system | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

February 18, 2022

A confidential report alleging Georgia’s voting touchscreens could be hacked is now being reviewed by the federal government. The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency wrote in a court filing late Thursday that it will assess potential vulnerabilities and decide whether updates or patches are needed to mitigate risks. CISA’s action came in response to a report by a computer scientist who said votes could be changed if someone gained physical access to Georgia’s voting touchscreens or election management computers. Georgia election officials say the state’s voting systems are secure and that vulnerabilities discovered in a lab would be difficult to exploit in a real election. There’s no indication that Georgia’s election computers manufactured by Dominion Voting Systems were hacked in the 2020 election, but an ongoing election security lawsuit alleges the touchscreens could be exploited in future elections. Three ballot counts and multiple investigations checked the 2020 election results. Both Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and plaintiffs in the lawsuit have called for a redacted version of the hacking report to be made public, but CISA urged a judge not to disseminate further information for now.

Full Article: Feds assessing allegation of vulnerability in Georgia voting system

Georgia: Investigation undercuts claim that 1,000 people voted twice | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

February 11, 2022

After the hectic 2020 Georgia primary, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger made a bombshell allegation from the steps of Liberty Plaza outside the Georgia Capitol that 1,000 people potentially voted twice. A year and a half later, an investigation by his own office has found less double voting than he had suspected. Most of Raffensperger’s allegation couldn’t be proved, the latest claim of voting fraud surrounding the 2020 election that fell short under scrutiny. Unlike former President Donald Trump’s false claims about his election being stolen, investigators validated some of Raffensperger’s assertions of double voting. The secretary of state’s office disclosed preliminary findings of its double voting investigation in response to requests by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The investigation so far indicates about 300 voters cast two ballots in the June 2020 primary and August 2020 primary runoff, almost always because of mistakes by confused voters and poll workers. The number of double voters could rise because about 100 cases remain under investigation.

Full Article: Investigation undercuts claim that 1,000 people voted twice in Georgia

Georgia debates if voting machines too vulnerable to hacking? | Joseph Marks/The Washington Post

February 4, 2022

There’s a long-running and complicated fight over how much security is necessary to protect elections against hacking. A brewing controversy in Georgia illustrates this perfectly. A judge may soon release a sealed report which was prepared as part of a years-long lawsuit over the security of Georgia’s voting machines. Its author, Alex Halderman, was given rare access to dig through the machines and look for ways to hack them. He said in a declaration filed in the case that he found multiple vulnerabilities that could allow hackers to install malicious software and undermine elections. Halderman, who runs the University of Michigan’s Center for Computer Security and Society, is an expert for the plaintiffs in the case, a group of Georgia voters who want the state to replace its touch-screen voting machines that produce paper records with hand-marked paper ballots that they say are far more secure. Georgia election officials see things differently. Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) says Halderman’s claims are overblown and that the bugs he found couldn’t reasonably be exploited in an actual election. He compared Halderman’s findings — discovered over 12 weeks of probing the machines — to “having the keys and alarm codes to a home then claiming he found a way to break in.” The report, which could be made public as early as this week, could shed new light on a battle between security advocates and election officials that burst into public view after the 2016 contest was marred by Russian interference. Russian hackers penetrated voter rolls in at least two states during that contest, but there’s no evidence they changed any votes.

Full Article: Are voting machines too vulnerable to hacking? Georgia’s having that debate – The Washington Post