Georgia: Atlanta DA granted request for grand jury to probe Trump alleged 2020 election interference | Kevin Johnson/USA Today

Judges granted a Georgia prosecutor’s request to seat a special grand jury to help criminally investigate former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the state’s 2020 election results during the waning days of his administration. Atlanta-area District Attorney Fani Willis made the request last week, citing the need for additional authority to compel witnesses to testify by subpoena. In a brief order Monday, Fulton County Chief Superior Court Judge Christopher Brasher said a majority of local judges agreed to authorize the panel for  a year’s term beginning May 2. “The special purpose grand jury shall be authorized to investigate any and all facts and circumstances relating directly or indirectly to alleged violations of the laws of the State of Georgia, as set forth in the request of the District Attorney … ” the order stated. Willis has said that her office had “received information indicating a reasonable probability” that the 2020 election was “subject to possible criminal disruptions.” “As a result, our office has opened an investigation into any coordinated attempts to unlawfully alter the outcome of the 2020 elections in this state,” Willis said in a formal request for the panel.

Full Article: Grand jury to probe Trump efforts to overturn 2020 Georgia election

Texas man charged with threatening election, government officials in Georgia | Matt Zapotosky/The Washington Post

A Texas man was arrested Friday and charged with threatening election and other government officials in Georgia, in the first case brought by a Justice Department task force formed to combat such threats, authorities said. In an indictment, federal prosecutors alleged that Chad Christopher Stark, 54, posted a message on Craigslist on Jan. 5, 2021, saying it was “time to kill” an official, whose name is not included in the court documents. “Georgia Patriots it’s time for us to take back our state from these Lawless treasonous traitors. It’s time to invoke our Second Amendment right it’s time to put a bullet in the treasonous Chinese [Official A]. Then we work our way down to [Official B] the local and federal corrupt judges,” Stark wrote, according to the indictment. Georgia officials, in particular, were targeted by hostile messages after they refused to back President Donald Trump’s bogus claims of election fraud. Trump called Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) the “enemy of the people” after the election went against him, and he urged Raffensperger in a phone call to “find” enough votes to overturn his defeat.

Full Article: Chad Christopher Stark charged with threatening Georgia election officials – The Washington Post

Judge weighs release of report alleging flaw in Georgia voting system | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A federal judge held off Monday on releasing more information from a sealed report alleging that someone who gained access to Georgia’s voting computers could flip votes. Before deciding whether to make portions of the report public, U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg asked for proposals from Georgia election officials and plaintiffs suing over election security. “I want people to understand the general concerns … without giving anyone a road map to hacking or intruding on the system or manipulating it,” Totenberg said during a court hearing. There’s no indication that Georgia’s election computers manufactured by Dominion Voting Systems were hacked in the 2020 election, but the lawsuit alleges that the touchscreens are a risk in future elections. Totenberg said she hoped to move quickly to share information without undermining election security. She asked attorneys to submit proposals by Wednesday. One option discussed in court would allow disclosure of the report to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, a part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that wrote a letter to the judge Jan. 21 informing her that potential vulnerabilities could be disclosed and mitigated. Meanwhile, a version of the report could also be prepared for public consumption. Both Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and election security advocates called last week for the report to be released following an article about it by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Full Article: Judge weighs release of report alleging flaw in Georgia voting system

Georgia: Fulton County DA requests special grand jury for Trump election probe | Tamar Hallerman/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is requesting a special grand jury to aid in her investigation of former President Donald Trump and his efforts to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results. In a Thursday letter to Christopher S. Brasher, chief judge of Fulton County’s Superior Court, Willis said the move was needed because a “significant number of witnesses and prospective witnesses have refused to cooperate with the investigation absent a subpoena requiring their testimony.” She cited comments Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger made during an October 2021 interview with NBC News, in which he said “if (Willis) wants to interview me, there’s a process for that.” So-called special purpose grand juries are rarely used in Georgia. But they could be a valuable tool for Willis as she takes the extraordinary step of investigating the conduct of a president while he was in office, legal experts say. “I think it makes sense,” said Melissa Redmon, a former Fulton County deputy DA who’s now an assistant clinical professor at the University of Georgia’s law school. “Having a jury that’s already familiar with the investigation just saves everyone a lot of time.”

Full Article: Fulton DA in Georgia requests special grand jury for Trump election probe

Georgia buys new voter registration system after long lines in 2020 | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Georgia is replacing a laggy statewide voter registration system that caused colossal lines during early voting in the 2020 election. The new technology could prevent similar waits in this year’s races for governor and the U.S. Senate. Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced Wednesday that the state will partner with Salesforce, a San Francisco-based software company, to build a system that will store registration records for Georgia’s 7.7 million voters, check in early voters and process absentee ballot information. The new system, nicknamed GaRVIS for the Georgia Registered Voter Information System, will take the place of the state’s ElectioNet technology that buckled under the weight of high turnout and unprecedented absentee ballot adoption in October 2020. Wait times exceeded eight hours at the start of early voting before election officials and the state’s prior vendor, Louisiana-based Civix, added capacity to the system so it could handle the load. Election Day went more smoothly, with wait times averaging less than three minutes.

Full Article: Georgia installs voter registration system to prevent long lines

Georgia: Fox News, others seek access to report on voting machines | Kate Brumback/Associated Press

In defending itself against a defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems, Fox News is seeking access to an expert report filed under seal in a separate Georgia lawsuit that the author says details vulnerabilities in the company’s touchscreen voting machines. Election security expert J. Alex Halderman spent 12 weeks examining the voting machines used in Georgia and more than a dozen other states and said he identified “multiple severe security flaws” in the machines that would allow attackers to install malicious software. His report was filed in federal court in Atlanta in July in support of a long-running lawsuit filed by election security advocates and voters who want Georgia to scrap the electronic voting machines in favor of hand-marked paper ballots. Dominion in March filed a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News in Delaware, where both companies are incorporated, arguing the cable news giant falsely claimed that the voting company had rigged the 2020 election. A judge last month rejected Fox’s motion to dismiss the suit. The lawsuit cites Halderman, saying he “told Fox explicitly, ‘There is absolutely no evidence, none, that Dominion Voting Machines changed any votes in this election.’”

Full Article: Fox News, others seek access to report on voting machines | AP News

Georgia voting law wasn’t enough for Republican legislators | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

In the aftermath of Georgia’s 2021 election changes, a fresh batch of Republican-backed bills could go even further in the upcoming legislative session. The election-year proposals would eliminate all remaining ballot drop boxes, discard the state’s recently purchased voting touchscreen machines, give the GBI authority to investigate voting fraud and create a constitutional amendment to prevent any future possibility that noncitizens could be allowed to vote. The tide of voting bills arrives as GOP legislators push beyond last year’s election overhaul following incumbent Republican Donald Trump’s narrow loss to Democrat Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential race. The sweeping law limited absentee voting drop boxes to early voting sites, required additional ID for absentee voting, allowed state takeovers of county elections and made many other changes. Voting rights groups warn that Republican legislators are seeking to limit voting access as a way to please constituents who believe false allegations that the 2020 election was stolen because Trump said it was.

 

Full Article: More Georgia election rules planned by Republican-led General Assembly

Georgia county might close voting precincts and open one large site | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A replacement elections board is planning to close all seven polling places in Lincoln County north of Augusta, requiring in-person voters to report to one centralized location. The poll closures would reduce voting access for rural residents who would have to drive 15 miles or more to cast a ballot in a county with no public transportation options, leading to opposition from voting rights advocates. The plan is moving forward after a state law passed this year abolished the previous county elections board and gave a majority of appointments to the Republican County Commission. Lincoln is one of six counties where the Republican-controlled Georgia General Assembly reorganized local election boards. “This is about the powerful flexing their muscles and saying, ‘We can do whatever we want to do, and who’s going to stop us?’ ” said the Rev. Denise Freeman, who is organizing Lincoln voters to oppose the poll closures. “In Lincoln County, it’s always been about power and control.” The county’s elections director, Lilvender Bolton, said a central voting center near the city of Lincolnton would give voters a single site for both early and election day voting, and it would provide more space than small, little-used precincts.

Full Article: Georgia county might close voting precincts and open one large site

Georgia: Lincoln County attempts to eliminate six of seven polling places | Susan McCord/Augusta Chronicle

Lincoln County is trying to close all but one polling place for next year’s elections, a move opposed by voting and civil rights groups. Relocating voters from the county’s seven precincts to a single location will make voting “easier and more accessible” and eliminate the need to transport voting equipment and staff the remaining sites, according to a news release. Community members disagreed. “Lincoln County is a very rural county. Some people live as far as 23 miles from the city of Lincolnton,” said Denise Freeman, an activist and former Lincoln County school board member. “This is not about convenience for the citizens. This is about control. This is about the good old boys wanting to do what they’ve always done, which is power and control.” The move was made possible after the Georgia General Assembly passed legislation earlier this year disbanding the Lincoln County Board of Elections. The chief sponsor of Senate bills 282 and 283 was Sen. Lee Anderson, R-Grovetown, whose district includes Lincoln County. The newly-appointed board agreed to move forward with the “consolidation” plan and was expected to vote on it last week, but appeared to lack a quorum, several said. Multiple public interest groups including the Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda, Common Cause Georgia, the Southern Poverty Law Center and Augusta’s Interfaith Coalition are taking a stand against the effort.

Full Article: Lincoln County attempts to eliminate six of seven polling places

Georgia: Quest for ballot inspection renewed by candidate Perdue | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Republican candidate for Georgia governor David Perdue filed a lawsuit Friday seeking to inspect absentee ballots in Fulton County, repeating some of the same unproven allegations as in a lawsuit dismissed two months ago. Perdue’s complaint, filed four days after he launched his campaign, revives a series of failed lawsuits by supporters of former President Donald Trump searching for fraud in last year’s election. Perdue has put false claims of election fraud at the center of his campaign against incumbent Republican Gov. Brian Kemp. The former U.S. senator said he wouldn’t have certified the election results and wanted a special legislative session to delve into conspiracy theories about the outcome. State election officials have said there’s no indication of fraud after three ballot counts and multiple investigations. Democrat Joe Biden defeated Trump by about 12,000 votes in Georgia. Perdue’s lawsuit echoes a case that also sought to inspect about 147,000 absentee ballots in Fulton County. Digital images of the ballots were made public earlier this year, but the plaintiffs want to review the originals.

Full Article: Quest for ballot inspection in Georgia renewed by candidate Perdue

Georgia lawsuit looks to ban election machines over use of QR codes | Justin Gray/WSB

Critics of Georgia’s elections were back in court Wednesday in Fulton County trying to ban the use of the voting machines used at every Georgia polling place. Wednesday’s hearing was not about overturning the 2020 election. Instead, the plaintiffs were trying to block the continued use of the $100 million in voting machines Georgia uses at every polling place in the state. A seemingly skeptical judge Kimberly Esmond Adams presided over the virtual court hearing. The plaintiffs claim counting ballots by QR codes is against Georgia law. “Doesn’t your argument totally ignore the evidence?” Adams asked the plaintiffs at one point. “The heart of the lawsuit is that the vote is acclimated out of the QR code, and the voter cannot verify that,” Garland Favorito with Voterga.org said. “You’re suggesting that there would be some kind of intricate system that would reflect one set of votes but record something entirely different?” “Well, there may, be I don’t know. I can’t verify that,” an attorney for Voterga.org said.

Full Article: Lawsuit looks to ban election machines over use of QR codes – WSB-TV Channel 2 – Atlanta

Inside Trump’s campaign to demonize two Georgia election workers | Jason Szep and Linda So/Reuters

As Donald Trump’s campaign sought to overturn his shocking loss of the state of Georgia in the 2020 presidential election, it hatched a conspiracy theory. At its center were two masterminds: a clerical worker in a county election office, and her mom, who had taken a temporary job to help count ballots. The alleged plot: Wandrea “Shaye” Moss and mother Ruby Freeman cheated Trump by pulling fake ballots from suitcases hidden under tables at a ballot-counting center. In early December, the campaign began raining down allegations on the two Black women. Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, falsely claimed that video footage showed the women engaging in “surreptitious illegal activity” and acting suspiciously, like drug dealers “passing out dope.” In early January, Trump himself singled out Freeman, by name, 18 times in a now-famous call in which he pressed Georgia officials to alter the state’s results. He called the 62-year-old temp worker a “professional vote scammer,” a “hustler” and a “known political operative” who “stuffed the ballot boxes.” Freeman made a series of 911 emergency calls in the days after she was publicly identified in early December by the president’s camp. In a Dec. 4 call, she told the dispatcher she’d gotten a flood of “threats and phone calls and racial slurs,” adding: “It’s scary because they’re saying stuff like, ‘We’re coming to get you. We are coming to get you.’” Two days later, a panicked Freeman called 911 again, after hearing loud banging on her door just before 10 p.m. Strangers had come the night before, too. She begged the dispatcher for assistance. “Lord Jesus, where’s the police?” she asked, according to the recording, obtained by Reuters in a records request. “I don’t know who keeps coming to my door.” “Please help me.”

Full Article: Inside Trump’s campaign to demonize two Georgia election workers

Georgia Republicans purge Black Democrats from county election boards | James Oliphant and Nathan Layne/Reuters

Protesters filled the meeting room of the Spalding County Board of Elections in October, upset that the board had disallowed early voting on Sundays for the Nov. 2 municipal election. A year ago, Sunday voting had been instrumental in boosting turnout of Black voters. But this was an entirely different five-member board than had overseen the last election. The Democratic majority of three Black women was gone. So was the Black elections supervisor. Now a faction of three white Republicans controlled the board – thanks to a bill passed by the Republican-led Georgia legislature earlier this year. The Spalding board’s new chairman has endorsed former president Donald Trump’s false stolen-election claims on social media. The panel in Spalding, a rural patch south of Atlanta, is one of six county boards that Republicans have quietly reorganized in recent months through similar county-specific state legislation. The changes expanded the party’s power over choosing members of local election boards ahead of the crucial midterm Congressional elections in November 2022. The unusual rash of restructurings follows the state’s passage of Senate Bill 202, which restricted ballot access statewide and allowed the Republican-controlled State Election Board to assume control of county boards it deems underperforming. The board immediately launched a performance review of the Democratic-leaning Fulton County board, which oversees part of Atlanta. The Georgia restructurings are part of a national Republican effort to expand control over election administration in the wake of Trump’s false voter-fraud claims. Republican-led states such as Florida, Texas and Arizona have enacted new curbs on voter access this year. Backers of Trump’s false stolen-election claims are running campaigns for secretary of state – the top election official – in battleground states. And some Republicans in Wisconsin are seeking to eliminate the state’s bipartisan election commission and threatening its members with prosecution.

Full Article: Georgia Republicans purge Black Democrats from county election boards | Reuters

Editorial: Trump’s rage at Georgia Republicans should unsettle us all | Greg Sargent/The Washington Post

Earlier this year, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed the most nationally scrutinized “election integrity” bill in the country. The Republican governor plainly hoped this would atone for the sin of being insufficiently corrupt on Donald Trump’s behalf, by insulating him from Trump’s attacks on his refusal to help overturn the 2020 election. In this apparent calculus, while Kemp wouldn’t destroy his reputation by engaging in full-blown corruption to help overturn U.S. democracy and keep Trump in power illegitimately, at least he’d be seen championing one of the worst voter suppression bills in memory. That would count for something, right? Oddly enough, this doesn’t appear to have had its desired effect. CNN reports that Kemp is now facing the prospect of a serious primary challenge from David Perdue, the businessman and former senator. He very well may have Trump’s backing, and Republicans in the state say Kemp could lose if it happens. In much of our discourse, Trump-backed GOP primary challenges to sitting Republicans tend to be cast mainly as retaliation for personal disloyalty to the former president. There’s something to that, but the full truth appears to be darker. What this really suggests is that large swaths of Republican voters appear to want to elect people to office who would have been willing to overturn the election on Trump’s behalf, and will be willing to overturn a loss in the future.

Full Article: Opinion | Trump’s rage at Gov. Brian Kemp over the 2020 election should unsettle us all – The Washington Post

Georgia Grand Jury Looms in Trump Election Interference Investigation | Danny Hakim and Richard Fausset/The New York Times

As the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot fights to extract testimony and documents from Donald J. Trump’s White House, an Atlanta district attorney is moving toward convening a special grand jury in her criminal investigation of election interference by the former president and his allies, according to a person with direct knowledge of the deliberations. The prosecutor, Fani Willis of Fulton County, opened her inquiry in February and her office has been consulting with the House committee, whose evidence could be of considerable value to her investigation. But her progress has been slowed in part by the delays in the panel’s fact gathering. By convening a grand jury dedicated solely to the allegations of election tampering, Ms. Willis, a Democrat, would be indicating that her own investigation is ramping up. Her inquiry is seen by legal experts as potentially perilous for the former president, given the myriad interactions he and his allies had with Georgia officials, most notably Mr. Trump’s January call to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, urging him to “find 11,780 votes” — enough to reverse the state’s election result. The Georgia case is one of two active criminal investigations known to touch on the former president and his circle; the other is the examination of his financial dealings by the Manhattan district attorney.

Full Article: In Trump Election Interference Investigation, Grand Jury Looms – The New York Times

Georgia: Trump call to ‘find’ votes was threat to my safety, elections official says | Martin Pengelly/The Guardian

The Georgia Republican responsible for running elections considered an infamous call in which Donald Trump told him to “find” enough votes to overturn Joe Biden’s victory in the state a “threat” to his safety and that of his family. Biden’s victory in Georgia was a narrow but vital part of his national win. No Democratic presidential candidate had taken the state since Bill Clinton in 1992. Trump called Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, nearly two months after election day, on Saturday 2 January. Telling him “it’s pretty clear we won”, the then president said: “I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have [to get]” to surpass Biden’s total. Raffensperger, a conservative who supported Trump, resisted the president’s demands. That prompted Trump to suggest the refusal to expose mass voter fraud in Georgia – on which Trump insisted but which did not exist, as in all other states – could be a “criminal offense”. “That’s a big risk to you,” Trump said. “That’s a big risk.”

Full Article: Trump call to ‘find’ votes was threat to my safety, Georgia elections official says | Donald Trump | The Guardian

Georgia Secretary of State: Trump ‘had no idea how elections work’ | Reid Wilson/The Hill

Former President Trump demonstrated virtually no knowledge of the conduct of modern elections procedures in a long and rambling phone call with Georgia’s top elections administrator as he ticked off a host of debunked and fanciful conspiracy theories he blamed for his electoral defeat. The man on the other end of that call in early January, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R), details months of mistruths and disinformation perpetuated by the Trump campaign that led up to their conversation in a new book out Tuesday, “Integrity Counts.”  The book includes a roughly 40-page transcript of the call itself, which shows an increasingly agitated Trump grasping at allegations that Raffensperger and his top deputy systematically refute as then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows pleaded with the Georgia officials to investigate further and Trump urged Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to deliver the state’s electoral votes. President Biden became the first Democratic presidential candidate since Bill Clinton to carry Georgia’s electoral votes, by a margin of 11,779 votes.  “Fellas, I need 11,000 votes. Give me a break,” Trump told Raffensperger and Ryan Germany, the general counsel to the secretary of state, according to the transcript. “This repeated request for votes showed me that President Trump really had no idea how elections work. The secretary of state’s office doesn’t allocate any votes,” Raffensperger writes in an annotation of the call. 

Full Article: Georgia secretary of state: Trump ‘had no idea how elections work’ | TheHill

Georgia: Election investigators haven’t found evidence of counterfeit ballots | Stephen Fowler/Georgia Public Broadcasting

Georgia election officials continue to pour cold water on claims of fraudulent ballots in the 2020 election, after investigators failed to find “pristine” counterfeit absentee ballots that were allegedly counted in Fulton County. Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office reported results of the investigation in a court document filed late Tuesday in a case that seeks to inspect Fulton’s 147,000 absentee ballots to find proof of fake votes. “Based upon interviews with the foregoing witnesses, as well as other witnesses who were interviewed during the course of the investigation, and in the inspection of approximately 1,000 absentee ballots and ballot images, the Secretary’s investigators have been unable to substantiate the allegations that fraudulent or counterfeit ballots were counted,” the filing read. Investigators looked into claims made by Suzi Voyles, who worked the county’s risk-limiting audit and claimed to see a batch of “pristine” ballots that looked suspicious. Voyles is now running for Congress as a Republican in the 6th Congressional District. After interviewing Voyles two separate times, investigators checked several batches of absentee ballots that she claimed were marked by computer instead of by hand. But they found no irregularities or any ballots that appeared to be counterfeits.

Full Article: Election investigators haven’t found evidence of counterfeit ballots in Georgia | Georgia Public Broadcasting

Georgia election official takes the fight to Trump | Marc Caputo/Politico

Donald Trump never wastes an opportunity to attack Georgia’s top statewide Republican officeholders for failing to help him overturn the 2020 election results in the key swing state. Brad Raffensperger is the only one who refuses to shut up and take it. Raffensperger, who has borne the brunt of Trump’s wrath as the top election official in the state, is running a damn-the-torpedoes reelection campaign that directly confronts the former president — even though it could cost him the GOP nomination. In a party where Trump’s enemies tend to see their political careers abruptly ended, Raffensperger’s approach is being closely watched by Republicans within the state and outside. “The last internal poll I saw said that 87 percent of Republican primary voters felt like the election was stolen,” said former Republican Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-Ga.). “With those kinds of numbers, I don’t see Brad getting through the primary.” If Raffensperger isn’t Trump’s top GOP nemesis, he’s close to it. The Georgia secretary of state refused Trump’s requests to alter the state’s vote count and feuded with the former president over Trump’s baseless claims of widespread voter fraud. At one point, Raffensperger’s office secretly recorded Trump trying to persuade the secretary of state to “find” votes to make him the winner — a potential crime by Trump that local prosecutors are now investigating. As a result, Trump has showered him with criticism for nearly a year, going so far as to call Raffensperger an “enemy of the people.”

Full Article: Georgia election official takes the fight to Trump – POLITICO

Georgia: Criminal inquiry into Trump’s election interference gathers steam | Peter Stone/The Guardian

Donald Trump is facing increasing legal scrutiny in the crucial battleground state of Georgia over his attempt to sway the 2020 election there, and that heat is now overlapping with investigations in Congress looking at the former president’s efforts to subvert American democracy. A criminal investigation into Trump’s 2 January call prodding Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to “just find” him 11,780 votes to block Joe Biden’s win in the state is making headway. The Georgia district attorney running the inquiry is now also sharing information with the House committee investigating the 6 January attack on the Capitol in Washington DC. Meanwhile, a justice department taskforce investigating threats to election officials nationwide has launched inquiries in Georgia, where election officers and workers received death threats or warnings of violence, including some after Trump singled out one official publicly for not backing his baseless fraud claims. Despite these investigations, Trump is still pushing bogus fraud claims in Georgia. Trump wrote to Raffensperger in September asking him to decertify the election results, which is impossible, and with an eye on the 2022 elections is trying to oust Raffensperger, as well as the state’s governor, Brian Kemp, and other top Republicans who defied his demands to block Biden’s win. Former justice department officials and voting rights advocates say Trump’s conspiratorial attacks on Georgia’s election results, and the threats to public officials, need to be investigated diligently, and prosecuted if warranted by law enforcement, to protect election integrity and public officials.

Full Article: Criminal inquiry into Trump’s Georgia election interference gathers steam | Georgia | The Guardian

Georgia: Department of Homeland Security Cyber Office Wants to See Secret Voting Machine Vulnerability Report | Shannon Vavra and Jose Pagliery/The Daily Beast

A cybersecurity official at the Department of Homeland Security has shown interest in seeing a copy of a report alleging “severe” vulnerabilities in Georgia’s voting machines—a report that a federal judge has decided to keep secret. As The Daily Beast reported last month, U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg ordered the report—authored by a renowned computer security academic—to remain sealed. Although the report only discusses the potential for future election interference, her restrictions appear to be driven by a desire to avoid fueling unfounded right-wing conspiracy theories that Donald Trump beat Joe Biden in 2020. But now the Streisand effect is in full swing, as the report’s secrecy is attracting even more attention from two camps: the federal agency tasked with helping protect elections and state election officials around the country who are also relying on these machines in certain jurisdictions. According to an email exchange filed in court documents, University of Michigan computer science professor J. Alex Halderman reached out directly to the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) one week after The Daily Beast’s reporting and quickly heard back from the department’s election security director. “Yes, CISA would be willing to receive the report regarding possible vulnerabilities in election infrastructure,” wrote Geoffrey Hale, who leads the agency’s so-called “Election Security Initiative,” according to the court filing.

Full Article: Department of Homeland Security Cyber Office Wants to See Secret Voting Machine Vulnerability Report

Georgia: High-stakes election tests Fulton County amid state takeover threat | Mark Niesse, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Fulton County is running an election for its life in this November’s race for Atlanta mayor. If the county stumbles, Georgia’s government might take over.
Fulton will try to prove itself after 2020 elections scarred by slow results, long lines, lost absentee ballot requests and constant criticism from Republican President Donald Trump and his supporters. But the county will be challenged by the higher standards required of Georgia’s new voting law, which demands quick ballot counting, greater transparency and investigations of discrepancies. Failure comes with potential consequences, including the replacement of Fulton’s majority-Democratic elections board with an appointee by Republicans. Republican Georgia legislators have already launched a performance review of the heavily Democratic county, a step under the state’s voting law toward ousting its election board, which oversees polling place locations, staffing and certification of results. The Republican-controlled State Election Board could then install its own county elections superintendent.

 

Full Article: High-stakes election tests Fulton amid state takeover threat

Georgia: Trump Committed ‘Multiple Crimes’ With Election Interference, Analysis Suggests | Jason Lemon/CNN

Former President Donald Trump appears to have committed “multiple crimes” in his effort to overturn the 2020 Georgia elections results, a new legal analysis suggests. In early January, The Washington Post reported leaked audio of a call between Trump and Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in which the former president urged the Republican official to “to find 11,780 votes” in his favor to overturn President Joe Biden‘s victory in the southern state. Trump made a similar effort to pressure Georgia’s GOP Governor Brian Kemp to illegally block Biden’s win. “We conclude that Trump’s post-election conduct in Georgia leaves him at substantial risk of possible state charges predicated on multiple crimes,” said the report released Friday by the Brookings Institution, a think tank in Washington, D.C. “These charges potentially include criminal solicitation to commit election fraud; intentional interference with performance of election duties; conspiracy to commit election fraud; criminal solicitation; and state RICO violations,” the legal analysis explained.

Full Article: Trump Committed ‘Multiple Crimes’ With Georgia Election Interference, Analysis Suggests

Georgia  Republican lieutenant governor demonised by Trump reveals what’s behind GOP election suppression laws: ‘They got scared’ | Gino Spocchia/The Independent

A senior Georgia Republican and former target of Donald Trump has delivered a damning analysis of the party’s attempts at restricting voting access, which he says was because GOP leaders “got scared” by defeat in 2020. Geoff Duncan, the Republican lieutenant governor of Georgia, claimed in a book published on Tuesday that Republicans were restricting turnout — and particularly in big swing states such as Florida, Georgia and Texas — because they feared losing in future. The remarks, which were reported by The Washington Post on Wednesday, were published on the same day that Texas’s Republican governor Gregg Abbott signed a bill into law that restricts voting access, and according to campaigners, will disproportionately target Democratic voters. Mr Duncan wrote in his book, called GOP 2.0: “Unfortunately, many held to the theory that if more people vote, Republicans will lose, because they got scared, GOP leaders became too focused on making voting more difficult.” “We had a clear motive and selfish aims,” the Republican, who announced in May that he will not seek re-election, wrote of the voting restrictions introduced in Florida, Georgia, Texas and around the country. “Nobody thought GOP efforts were anything more than attempts to ensure more Republicans won next time.”

Full Article: Senior Republican demonised by Trump reveals what’s behind GOP election suppression laws: ‘They got scared’ | The Independent

Georgia Election Officials Prep For New Voting Law’s Impact | Stephen Fowler/Georgia Public Broadcasting

It would be easy to lose track of all the changes to Georgia’s voting rules made by the 98-page Senate Bill 202, but for local elections officials, that’s not an option. Across three days this week, hundreds of county supervisors, elections board members, probate judges and staff received hands-on training at the Georgia Association of Voter Registration and Elections Officials conference on Jekyll Island. The session dealing with SB 202 ran for more than an hour, with the Secretary of State’s office going section by section to make sure no alteration goes unnoticed. While Republicans, Democrats and federal lawsuits have zeroed in on a few higher-profile parts of the bill, dozens of pages of it that people aren’t talking about more directly affect how local officials do their jobs.

Full Article: Georgia Election Officials Prep For New Voting Law’s Impact | Georgia Public Broadcasting

Georgia Secretary of State seeks court orders for absentee ballot study | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

 

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger is going to court to unseal absentee ballot documents for a study of signature verification in last year’s presidential election. The secretary of state’s office confirmed this week that it is seeking court orders to retrieve absentee ballot envelopes in at least 17 counties. Other counties have disclosed election materials without requiring a judge’s approval. The absentee ballot envelopes will be used for a statewide study evaluating the effectiveness of the signature verification process, which compared voters’ signatures to verify their identities. The Georgia General Assembly has since eliminated signature verification, replacing it with new ID requirements. Raffensperger announced the study in December after Republican Donald Trump and state legislators called for further verification of election results that showed he lost to Democrat Joe Biden by less than 12,000 votes in Georgia. An audit of absentee ballot signatures in Cobb County completed later that month found no cases of fraud. Though election officials no longer use signature matching for absentee ballots, the study will evaluate verification methods employed in November’s election, said Trey Hood, a University of Georgia political science professor hired by the secretary of state’s office to conduct the research.

 

Full Article: Judges asked to unseal Georgia absentee ballots for signature study

Georgia: Election reform group seeks ban on Dominion voting technology | Jeremy Beaman/Washington Examiner

A self-described election integrity group sued the state of Georgia on Tuesday, seeking a ban on the use of Dominion Voting Systems touchscreen ballot-marking technology across the state. VoterGA, which led a suit against Fulton County for an inspection of 2020 election ballots, asked the Fulton County Superior Court to declare the state’s use of Dominion Democracy Suite 5.5 Ballot Marking Device voting systems a violation of state elections law and to enjoin the officials from administrating future elections with those devices. Plaintiffs allege Democracy Suite systems fail to comply with the state’s election code, which provides voting systems must “print an elector verifiable paper ballot” and “produce paper ballots which are marked with the elector’s choices in a format readable by the elector.” The machines in use generate a paper ballot that voters can visually verify, but it also produces a QR code on the paper ballot reflecting the voter’s choices, which cannot be visually verified, according to the lawsuit. Ballot scanners then read the QR code to determine a voter’s selections, and the “written portion of the paper ballot is not used for counting or re-counting the elector’s intent,” the suit said, alleging a legal violation.

Full Article: Election reform group seeks ban on Dominion voting technology in Georgia

Georgia investigation of Fulton elections criticized by voting groups | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

 

Voting rights groups called an inquiry of Fulton County’s elections a “hostile takeover” that threatens democracy, saying Monday that they will fight attempts by Georgia’s government to replace the county’s elections board. The groups united near the Capitol after the State Election Board last week appointed a performance review panel to investigate problems in Fulton, the state’s most populous county and one that backed Democrat Joe Biden over Republican Donald Trump with 73% of the vote. Fulton’s elections were fraught with problems last year, such as long lines, undelivered absentee ballots and conspiracy theories, but voting organizations say the county is being scapegoated by Georgia’s Republican majority. “We’re taking action to make sure that democracy is protected and that our right to vote is protected,” said Helen Butler, executive director for the Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda, a civil rights organization. “We do not intend for our local boards of elections to be taken over in this process.” The organizations criticized the appointment of three white men — two Republicans and a Democrat — to investigate problems in a county that’s 62% nonwhite.

Full Article: Georgia investigation of Fulton elections criticized by voting groups

Georgia; Cybersecurity concerns raised over ballot marking devices | Doug Richards/11alive

A new court brief is sounding an alarm from cybersecurity experts about Georgia’s voting system. It suggests that cities like Atlanta use hand-marked paper ballots in elections this fall instead of the Dominion voting machines purchased by the state in 2019. This critique is separate and distinct from the unsubstantiated complaints that claimed election fraud in November. The concerns posed by cybersecurity experts say Georgia is asking for trouble by continuing to use the state’s voting machines. “I’m one of the cybersecurity professionals that think the more computers we have in the (election) system, the more vulnerable it is,” said Dr. Rich DeMillo, the founder of Georgia Tech’s new College of Cybersecurity. DeMillo says the state’s voting system can be hacked through networks or by infecting a machine or a printer in a voting booth. Another computer hacking expert, J. Alex Halderman, wrote a court brief detailing how he experimentally hacked a few of Georgia’s voting machines with the blessing of a federal judge. The court sealed the report to avoid tipping off real hackers how to do it. “My report demonstrates that Georgia’s (ballot marking devices) can be manipulated so that both the barcodes and the printed (ballot) text indicate the same fraudulent selections. No audit or recount can catch such fraud because all records of the voter’s intent would be wrong,” Halderman explained in a brief referencing the report.

 

Full Article: Cybersecurity concerns raised over Georgia voting system | 11alive.com

Georgia: Good Luck to the Judge Who Sealed a Ballot Machine Vulnerability Report | Dell Cameron/Gizmodo

Facing a quintessential damned-if-I-do-damned-if-I-don’t scenario, a federal judge in Georgia has sealed a 25,000-word report said to outline vulnerabilities in the state’s ballot-marking machines. The decision was seemingly made out of fear that the contents would add fuel to rampant conspiracy theories surrounding the 2020 election; a topic which is not even broached by its author. The Daily Beast, reporting the judge’s decision early Friday, said the report by J. Alex Halderman, a computer science professor at the University of Michigan, outlines specific vulnerabilities that, to quote the professor, “allow attackers to change votes despite the state’s purported defenses.” In a signed declaration, Halderman said he’d discovered “multiple severe security flaws” that could be exploited using malware, either with temporary physical access to the machine or by injecting it remotely via election management systems. Halderman writes: “I explain in detail how such malware, once installed, could alter voters’ votes while subverting all the procedural protections practiced by the State, including accepted testing, hash validation, logic and accuracy testing, external firmware validation, and risk-limiting audits (RLAs). Finally, I describe working proof-of-concept malware that I am prepared to demonstrate in court.”

Full Article: Judge Seals Ballot Machine Vulnerability Report in Georgia, Uh Oh