An audit of ballots cast in Cherokee County in the May 24 primary and June 21 runoff elections confirmed the county’s certified results, the county’s election department reported. The elections board initiated a risk-limited audit, conducted Wednesday and Thursday, of all early voting May 24 primary ballots at the Oak Grove precinct and June 21 Election Day ballots for the Democratic lieutenant governor runoff and the two Republican school board runoffs at the county’s Dixie, Hillside, Neese, Clayton, R.T. Jones and Teasley precincts. The precincts, other than Oak Grove, were selected at random. Elections officials initially planned to audit four precincts plus Oak Grove early voting to audit 10% of the precincts, the elections department said, but due to low numbers they added two precincts, for a total of seven audited precincts. The overall margin of error was 1.69%, with 294 votes separating the audit total and the total for those precincts as tabulated by the voting machines, Elections Director Anne Dover said. “We were very pleased with the outcome of the audit,” she said in an email. “The margin of error was 1.69%. This difference is well below the 10% mark we had set, and is below the State’s margin of error that was given to us for the November 2020 hand count, which was 5%.”
Georgia: Election security experts seek precautions after Coffee County breach | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A group of computer scientists and election integrity advocates are calling for Georgia to abandon voting touchscreens and conduct more audits of this fall’s elections following the revelation that several supporters of Donald Trump coordinated the copying of election software in Coffee County. They asked the State Election Board to switch to hand-marked paper ballots instead of continuing to use Dominion Voting Systems touchscreens that print out paper ballots, according to a letter sent Thursday. “The release of the Dominion software into the wild has measurably increased the risk to the real and perceived security of the election to the point that emergency action is warranted,” said the letter by 13 people, including two Georgia Tech professors. Several tech experts working for then-Trump attorney Sidney Powell copied an election server, memory cards and other voting equipment in Coffee County on Jan. 7, 2021, according to documents subpoenaed in a lawsuit. Security video showed that Cathy Latham, one of Georgia’s fake electors who tried to cast the state’s votes for Trump, escorted the technicians into the county elections office. The letter to the State Election Board said the breach presents a danger that copied software could be exploited to create malware that could make voting equipment print incorrect votes, though there’s no evidence that has happened in an election so far. Three vote counts found that Democrat Joe Biden won Georgia in the 2020 presidential election, and investigations have repeatedly discredited claims of fraud. Full Article: Georgia Election 2022: Election data copying spurs calls for changesHandling of Georgia election breach investigation questioned | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A recording first surfaced six months ago claiming that a team copied “every piece of equipment” in Coffee County’s elections office after the 2020 election, but it wasn’t Georgia investigators who confirmed that confidential voting data had been taken. Instead, it took a lawsuit by private citizens to find documents showing that allies of then-President Donald Trump and their computer experts gained access to sensitive files in the rural South Georgia county. Critics of Georgia election officials say the secretary of state’s office has been slow-walking the breach investigation as it fights a court case alleging that equipment manufactured by Dominion Voting Systems is vulnerable to insider attacks and hacks. The investigation has been pending for months, and few witnesses have been questioned. State election officials disagree, saying they’re still gathering evidence and there’s little threat to Georgia’s voting system after several people working for Sidney Powell, an attorney for Trump, copied election files on Jan. 7, 2021. They then distributed the data to conspiracy theorists who deny the results of the presidential election, which Trump lost. Similar incidents have resulted in indictments in Colorado and an attorney general’s investigation in Michigan. While the Georgia secretary of state’s office says it’s investigating, prosecutors in Fulton County moved quickly after the GBI opened a criminal investigation on Aug. 15. Full Article: Handling of Georgia election breach investigation questionedGeorgia: Newly obtained surveillance video shows fake Trump elector escorted operatives into elections office before voting machine breach | Zachary Cohen and Jason Morris/CNN
A Republican county official in Georgia escorted two operatives working with an attorney for former President Donald Trump into the county’s election offices on the same day a voting system there was breached, newly obtained video shows. The breach is now under investigation by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and is of interest to the Fulton County District Attorney, who is conducting a wider criminal probe of interference in the 2020 election. The video sheds more light on how an effort spearheaded by lawyers and others around Trump to seek evidence of voter fraud was executed on the ground from Georgia to Michigan to Colorado, often with the assistance of sympathetic local officials. In the surveillance video, which was obtained by CNN, Cathy Latham, a former GOP chairwoman of Coffee County who is under criminal investigation for posing as a fake elector in 2020, escorts a team of pro-Trump operatives to the county’s elections office on January 7, 2021, the same day a voting system there is known to have been breached. The two men seen in the video with Latham, Scott Hall and Paul Maggio, have acknowledged that they successfully gained access to a voting machine in Coffee County at the behest of Trump lawyer Sidney Powell. Text messages, emails and witness testimony filed as part of a long-running civil suit into the security of Georgia’s voting systems show Latham communicated directly with the then-Coffee County elections supervisor about getting access to the office, both before and after the breach. One text message, according to the court document, shows Latham coordinating the arrival and whereabouts of a team “led by Paul Maggio” that traveled to Coffee County at the direction of Powell. Full Article: Newly obtained surveillance video shows fake Trump elector escorted operatives into Georgia county's elections office before voting machine breach | CNN PoliticsGeorgia’s biggest county can’t find a top elections official | Matthew Brown/The Washington Post
It is in many ways an ideal job for a public servant with a passion for democracy — the chance to facilitate voting in Georgia’s most populous county, the electoral center of one of the most important political battlegrounds in the nation. Yet for 10 months, local leaders have been unable to hire a permanent director to run the Department of Registration and Elections in Fulton County, home to Atlanta. The previous director resigned in November and left the position in April, after pressure from local lawmakers and the turmoil of the 2020 election, when county staff endured death threats, baseless conspiracy theories, high-stakes audits and harassment from former president Donald Trump and his allies. Now, with Georgia in another highly charged campaign season and poised to play a pivotal role in the next presidential election, many here think the toxic swirl of state politics, national scrutiny, ongoing harassment and long-standing logistical issues has turned off potentially strong candidates and cast a shadow over the office itself. Full Article: Georgia's biggest county can’t find a top elections official - The Washington PostGeorgia: Trump election probe cites voting system breach | Kate Brumback and Christina A. Cassidy/Associated Press
The prosecutor investigating whether former President Donald Trump and others illegally tried to interfere in the 2020 election in Georgia is seeking information about the alleged involvement of a Trump ally in the breach of voting equipment at a county roughly 200 miles south of her Atlanta office. The widening of the probe highlights the latest instance in which unauthorized people appear to have gained access to voting equipment since the 2020 election, primarily in battleground states lost by Trump. Election experts have raised concerns that sensitive information shared online about the equipment may have exposed vulnerabilities that could be exploited by people intent on disrupting future elections. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is seeking to have attorney Sidney Powell, who tried persistently to overturn Trump’s loss, testify before a special grand jury seated for the investigation into possible illegal election interference. In her court petition filed Thursday, Willis said Powell is “known to be affiliated” with Trump and the Trump campaign and has unique knowledge about her communications with them and others “involved in the multi-state, coordinated efforts to influence the results of the November 2020 elections in Georgia and elsewhere.” The scope of Willis’ criminal investigation has expanded considerably since it began, prompted by a Jan. 2, 2021, phone call in which Trump suggested Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger could “find” the votes needed to overturn Trump’s narrow election loss in the state. Among other things, Willis wrote that she wants to ask Powell about rural Coffee County, where Trump beat President Joe Biden by nearly 40 percentage points. Full Article: Trump election probe in Georgia cites voting system breach | AP NewsGeorgia subpoenas media texts and emails from critic of Georgia electronic voting system | Stanley Dunlap/Georgia Recorder
A plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging the state’s electronic voting system is being subpoenaed by Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and the State Election Board for information that would include her communication with reporters. A subpoena filed Monday in U.S. District Court of Northern Georgia requests Marilyn Marks, executive director of Coalition for Good Governance, to provide every email, text message, details of conversation and any other documents about the unauthorized access of Coffee County’s voting system, including communication she’s had with the media. Marks and a First Amendment advocacy organization accused the state of trying to intimidate reporters and sources from reporting on potentially serious misconduct of some local Coffee election officials scheming with a team of computer forensic experts and Donald Trump loyalists to gain access to sensitive election files in attempt to discredit President Joe Biden’s narrow 2020 election victory in Georgia. Marks said she believes she is being targeted by the state because she was on the March 2021 call that led to the news breaking this year of a breach of the Coffee County voting system and has been outspoken in her criticism of the state’s handling of the investigation. Marks is a critic of the state’s use of Dominion Voting Systems ballot-marking machines that critics say are less secure than hand-marked paper ballots. Marks noted that she is the first person in this case that the state has subpoenaed despite the state election board and secretary of state’s office having been aware of allegations before releasing the recording in February of a phone conversation she had in which Atlanta bails bondsman Scott Hall described chartering a flight to Coffee County to “scan every freaking ballot.” Full Article: State subpoenas media texts and emails from critic of Georgia electronic voting system - Georgia RecorderGeorgia: Confidential 2020 election files copied by Atlanta tech firm | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Atlanta-based tech firm SullivanStrickler says it had “no reason to believe” there was anything illegal about sending four of its employees to a South Georgia county to copy every election file they could find: memory cards that store votes, ballot scanners, and an election server. The company asserted this week it was doing legitimate work in January 2021 at the behest of Sidney Powell, an attorney for then-President Donald Trump who had promised on national TV to “unleash the kraken” of claims that the presidential election was rigged. But SullivanStrickler hasn’t explained its justification for copying confidential data, besides a statement that the firm was preserving election records under Powell’s direction. The company then distributed the data to election deniers and billed Powell $26,000 for the job. The GBI recently opened a criminal investigation of computer trespass, which is a felony. The sensitive election data collected by SullivanStrickler, which also gathered election files in Antrim County, Michigan, soon reached the hands of conspiracy theorists who were seeking to reverse the outcome of the election that Trump lost. The files from Georgia or Michigan were downloaded by individuals such as a Texas meteorologist who promoted election falsehoods on social media, a former pro surfer who alleged the election was manipulated, and a right-wing podcaster, The Washington Post reported Monday. Full Article: Confidential 2020 election files copied by Atlanta tech firm in South Georgia countyGeorgia: Lindsey Graham Resists Testifying in Trump Investigation | Danny Hakim and Richard Fausset/The New York Times
Six days after major news organizations declared Donald J. Trump the loser of the 2020 presidential election, his allies were applying a desperate full-court press in an effort to turn his defeat around, particularly in Georgia. The pro-Trump lawyer Sidney Powell went on television claiming that there was abundant evidence of foreign election meddling that never ultimately materialized. Another lawyer, L. Lin Wood, filed a lawsuit seeking to block the certification of Georgia’s election results. That same day, Nov. 13, 2020, Senator Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican and one of Mr. Trump’s most ardent supporters, made a phone call that left Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, immediately alarmed. Mr. Graham, he said, had asked if there was a legal way, using the state courts, to toss out all mail-in votes from counties with high rates of questionable signatures. The call would eventually trigger an ethics complaint, demands from the left for Mr. Graham’s resignation and a legal drama that is culminating only now, nearly two years later, as the veteran lawmaker fights to avoid testifying before an Atlanta special grand jury that is investigating election interference by Mr. Trump and his supporters. Full Article: Lindsey Graham Resists Testifying in Trump Investigation in Georgia - The New York TimesGeorgia County Commissioners pass resolution urging lawmakers to remove QR codes from elections | Isaiah Singleton/Cherokee Tribune & Ledger-News
The Cherokee County Board of Commissioners unanimously approved a resolution Tuesday urging the Georgia legislature to eliminate the QR codes used in the statewide voting system. Commission Chairman Harry Johnston said the board received many requests from the public to change the voting system in Cherokee County, but does not have the power to do it. “We’ve researched it, our attorney has researched it, and we’ve determined that we don’t have that power, while there are some points in the law that might seem to indicate we do, the preponderance of the law clearly says that we do not and so we just can’t do that,” he said. “Furthermore, I’m not sure we really would want to change Cherokee County in a way that would be unique from other counties. My personal belief is that 159 different voting systems across Georgia would not necessarily move us toward greater election integrity, but it might actually move us away from that.” In May, over 100 protesters gathered at the Albert Stone Elections Building in Canton to call for the elections board to hand count ballots from the May 24 primary. They said they had concerns about the state’s voting machines, specifically the QR codes, which they said were “unverifiable” and “illegible.” Full Article: Commissioners pass resolution urging Georgia lawmakers to remove QR codes from elections | Local News | tribuneledgernews.comGeorgia: Giuliani Is Told He Is a Target in Trump Election Inquiry | Richard Fausset and Danny Hakim/The New York Times
The legal pressures on Donald J. Trump and his closest allies intensified further on Monday, as prosecutors informed his former personal attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani, that Mr. Giuliani was a target in a wide-ranging criminal investigation into election interference in Georgia. The notification came on the same day that a federal judge rejected efforts by another key Trump ally, Senator Lindsey Graham, to avoid giving testimony before the special grand jury hearing evidence in the case in Atlanta. One of Mr. Giuliani’s lawyers, Robert Costello, said in an interview that he was notified on Monday that his client was a target. Being so identified does not guarantee that a person will be indicted; rather, it usually means that prosecutors believe an indictment is possible, based on evidence they have seen up to that point. Mr. Giuliani, who as Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer spearheaded efforts to keep Mr. Trump in power, emerged in recent weeks as a central figure in the inquiry being conducted by Fani T. Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County, Ga., which encompasses most of Atlanta. Earlier this summer, prosecutors questioned witnesses before the special grand jury about Mr. Giuliani’s appearances before state legislative panels in December 2020, when he spent hours peddling false conspiracy theories about secret suitcases of Democratic ballots and corrupted voting machines. Full Article: Giuliani Is a Target in Georgia’s Trump Election Inquiry, Lawyer Says - The New York TimesGeorgia: Courtroom showdowns ahead for Atlanta-based grand jury examining Trump and 2020 election | Bill Rankin and Tamar Hallerman/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Courtroom showdowns and appearances involving high-profile figures are on deck this week as part of the ongoing Fulton County investigation into what happened in Georgia after the 2020 presidential election. Rudy Giuliani, who represented former President Donald Trump in his efforts to overturn the election results in a half-dozen swing states, is scheduled to appear Tuesday before the special purpose grand jury aiding the investigation. Attorneys for U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a key ally of Trump’s, will go to federal court on Wednesday to fight a grand jury subpoena. And two other lawyers connected to the Trump campaign are teeing up challenges of their own in New Mexico and Colorado. Giuliani will certainly be asked about his appearances before two state legislative panels in December 2020. During three hearings, the former New York City mayor claimed widespread fraud infected Georgia’s presidential election. Giuliani showed an edited tape of ballots being counted in Atlanta’s State Farm Arena that he said was a “powerful smoking gun.” Both state and federal investigators have said Giuliani’s claims were baseless. Yet Giuliani continued to repeat those falsehoods, his subpoena alleges. Full Article: Courtroom showdowns ahead for Atlanta-based grand jury examining Trump and 2020 electionGeorgia: Probe of Coffee County’s 2020 election conduct revives Georgia voting machine lawsuit | Stanley Dunlap/Georgia Recorder
A long-running federal lawsuit challenging the security of Georgia’s voting system is now entangled in a dispute over the handling of an investigation into allegations that 2020 election skeptics illegally breached a county’s voting system. Attorneys representing the Coalition for a Good Governance and other election security advocates will attempt to wrap up depositions in the coming weeks and obtain other evidence regarding accusations that Coffee County elections officials granted activists access to the Dominion Voting System that is a frequent target of conspiracy theories tied to Republican President Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 election to Democrat Joe Biden. Among the dozen Coffee County-related subpoenas filed in U.S. District Court Northern District of Georgia is one last month for Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan, whose firm was behind the shoddy audit of Arizona’s Maricopa County in its administration of the 2020 presidential election. Cyber Ninjas is connected to digital security executive Benjamin Cotton, who has claimed in another investigation that he forensically examined voting systems in Coffee County and several other battleground states. The state election officials removed the county’s election server shortly after a newly hired Coffee County election director notified the state that the password no longer worked and that he found Logan’s business card on an office computer in April 2021. In recent court filings, the plaintiffs’ lawyers accuse the secretary of state’s office of withholding information and allege that the state purposefully delayed investigating a breach that threatens a system the state has fiercely defended. Full Article: Probe of Coffee County’s 2020 election conduct revives Georgia voting machine lawsuit - Georgia RecorderGeorgia Prosecutor Has Donald Trump in Her Sights, and She’s Not Stopping | Norman Eisen and Amy Lee Copeland/The New York Times
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
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 eligibilityGeorgia: Driven by voter skepticism, several counties seek election audits | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
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 auditsGeorgia: Lindsey Graham Tries Again to Quash Election-Probe Subpoena | Margaret Newkirk/Bloomberg
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 - BloombergAn end to ballot bar codes? Georgia election officials consider design changes | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
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.
Georgia: Subpoenas seek info on attempt to copy election data in Coffee County | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
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
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 votingGeorgia Republican candidates call for recount in Chatham County, statewide after Dekalb County recount | Will Peebles/Savannah Morning News
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
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.
Georgia: Revealed: election conspiracy theorists work as election officials across state | Justin Glawe/The Guardian
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 GuardianGeorgia election board sidesteps calls for paper ballots while possible server breach under investigation | Doug Richards/11alive.com
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
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.”
Georgia: Judge says Perdue’s election fraud claims are ‘conjecture and paranoia’ | David Wickert/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
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.”
Georgia early voting check-in system restored after outage | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
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.