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