Georgia election officials accused of destroying evidence

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press


Kate Brumback, Associated Press
Updated 4:10 pm CDT, Friday, July 26, 2019



Photo: Mike Stewart, AP
FILE - This May 22, 2018, file photo, shows a voter access card inserted in a reader during voting in the Georgia primary in Kennesaw, Ga. A federal judge is set to hear arguments, Thursday, July 25, 2019, in a lawsuit challenging Georgia's outdated voting machines and seeking statewide use of hand-marked paper ballots. The hearing will focus on requests for the judge to order the state to immediately stop using the current voting machines.


ATLANTA (AP) — In a federal court filing, lawyers for election integrity advocates accuse Georgia election officials of intentionally destroying evidence that could show unauthorized access to the state election system and potential manipulation of election results.

Election integrity advocates and individual Georgia voters sued election officials in 2017 alleging that the touchscreen voting machines Georgia has used since 2002 are unsecure and vulnerable to hacking. In a court filing Thursday, they said state officials began destroying evidence within days of the suit's filing and continued to do so as the case moved forward.

"The evidence strongly suggests that the State's amateurish protection of critical election infrastructure placed Georgia's election system at risk, and the State Defendants now appear to be desperate to cover-up the effects of their misfeasance — to the point of destroying evidence," the filing says.

A spokeswoman for the secretary of state's office, which oversees elections, denied the allegations.

The brief was filed Thursday as U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg was holding a hearing on requests by the plaintiffs that she order the state to immediately stop using its current voting machines and switch to hand-marked paper ballots. That hearing is set to continue Friday.

Read more: https://www.chron.com/news/us/article/Georgia-election-officials-accused-of-destroying-14174519.php

[CurtEastPoint]

1. And former SOS, who manages elections, is now our fucking GOP Governor.

[ResistantAmerican17]

13. Hold my beer

The “I like beer” court ruling on Thursday means down here in Texjesustan we don’t need preclearance for restricting in 2020. If the dems don’t retake the house this state will be a republican shithole in perpetuity.

[Qutzupalotl]

2. Hallelujah!

We’ve been talking about touchscreen vulnerabilities now for at least 17 years, including Diebold.

If Georgia gets hand-marked paper ballots for 2020, that could energize GA Democrats, who have been feeling disillusioned and disempowered lately. If we get good turnout in a fair election, we could flip a lot of seats.

[Scarsdale]

18. Ivanka tRump just received

a patent on voting machines. I am sure this mess will be all cleared up soon. Yeah, right!! I guess they will be built in her favorite country - Jyna. (as daddy pronounces it)

[stuffmatters]

32. WOW.

[Scarsdale]

34. Oh, and she was given a grant

of $100 Million to advance women's business ventures. I imagine hers will be the only business helped by this. What a damn rip-off this family is to the country. Best scam they have ever had, all taxpayer $$$$, while they line their pockets.

[stuffmatters]

37. Every day with this whole family in office is beyond sickening and infuriating.

[MBS]

38. + 1 million

Well said, and I share your pain.

[proActivist]

35. She received a trade mark, not

a patent. And it was in / for china, not America. Not sure why china needs voting machines, or why they would buy them from a trump.

https://www.bustle.com/p/ivanka-trump-trademark-for-voting-machines-was-approved-by-china-heres-what-that-means-13095260

[Ellipsis]

3. rob-georgia.zip.

Bringing you crooked elections since AT LEAST 2002.

[TrogL]

26. I've still got my copy

[Ellipsis]

27. Wow. Okay that's impressive

I've forgotten much more then I remember about that time.

[FiveGoodMen]

29. Yup. I remember that.

[Ellipsis]

31. Pulled up some history for others who don't - Link in Body

http://homepage.divms.uiowa.edu/~jones/voting/dieboldftp.html

[napi21]

4. There's no doubt Brian Kemp (who ultimately won the Governorship) both hid & destroyed docs.

I live in Ga. & IMO Kemp keeping his position of Sec. of State during his run for Governor should have been told to choose ONE! Either run for Governor, OR be Sec. of State, but not both! Hi was found to have 50,000 voter registrations in his desk drawer (that never got processed). He did everything, both legal & illegal, to beat Stacy Abrams in that race. He won by 54,000 votes, but his win will always be in question because of all the registrations he denied , and most were people of color.

I've voted on those machines. There has always been questions because of no verification process. his last year of use, there were even more questions because of the old machines malfunctioning, and there were no parts available to fix them. Thee only choice was to scavage parts from another unusable machine & hope the part worked..

I've read that new replacement machines have ordered. I don't understand why this law suit now, unless the new machines wont be available for the 2020 election.

[58Sunliner]

7. Kemp ordered the new machines. That should scare you.

"State election officials opt for 2020 voting machines vulnerable to hacking"
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/03/01/election-vulnerable-voting-machines-1198780

[ck4829]

44. +1

[mountain grammy]

5. Stacey won!

[iluvtennis]

10. Yes, she did.

[FM123]

16. Yep, she was robbed

[Botany]

19. As did Max Cleland, as did Barnes, as did Russ Feingold, as did HRC, as did Bill Nelson, as did...

.... Andrew Gillium, as did John Kerry, as did Al Gore, as did ...

Republicans have to cheat to win end of story. Look @ McConnell's blocking of election
reform and security.

[mountain grammy]

21. +1000

[Botany]

23. Is it funny that just now the NY Times is saying that Russia could have meddled with the vote ....

.... in 2016 things we have been shouting about for years is being picked up. "They" didn't
design those voting machines with electronic "back doors" and the capability of being manipulated
remotely (EES machines) for nothing.


"I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president." 2003 Wally O'Dell CEO Diebold.

[MBS]

39. + 1000

Thanks for the reminder of this long and growing list of stolen elections.

[Botany]

40. I forgot Don Siegelman Alabama 2002

Scott Walker's "wins" in Wisconsin, KY's 2015 Governor's race, and on and on.

BTW Ohio's 2018 elections don't pass my smell test too. 250,000 people voted for
a liberal democrat for the US Senate but turned around and voted for conservative
republicans for Gov., A.G., and Sec. of State.

[MBS]

41. Thanks for the extra data.

I long knew that Walker's "wins" reeked, but I hadn't known about the others.

[ck4829]

43. Indeed

[58Sunliner]

6. I'm sure they did. I'm sure no votes were compromised.

[ck4829]

45. +1. Nobody look! Just go back to sleep!

[brer cat]

8. They have been stealing elections

since those touchscreen machines were brought in.

[spooky3]

24. Notice how much more blue VA has become since

They did away with similar machines? That’s not the only factor, of course, but it shouldn’t be a factor at all.

[ck4829]

46. True

[JoeOtterbein]

9. Just 2.5 Words:

Lock em Up!

[cstanleytech]

11. Would be lovely if this lead to criminal charges and impeachment of Kemp.

[ck4829]

47. Indeed

[onetexan]

52. Hence why the destruction of evidence

Guy's got alot of covering up to do.

[greyl]

12. Death penalty. nt

[ck4829]

48. Don't need that... just life

[greyl]

51. Yeah, true, I'm against the death penalty.

At the time, I was making a too-vague comment about Barr trying to reinstate it.

[Baltimike]

14. krb

[ck4829]

15. K&R

[extvbroadcaster]

17. It's Georgia, what do you expect?

I lived in Georgia for 8 years. It is a beautiful state, really. Atlanta is a great city. But there is a culture there that is really backward in a lot of ways. People used to say there was Atlanta and everywhere else in the state. I would tend to agree. Outside of Athens, it is pretty much god, guns, and the GOP. Nothing would surprise me about the elections there. The good old boys have it locked down, and I don't know how you really change that. It has not changed much since the civil war. Which they are still fighting, by the way.

[Different Drummer]

25. I live in Georgia. Your assessment is right on the nose.

DD

[Kurt V.]

33. what about savannah. my niece lives there so we visit every few years. a little humid but nice

and ... blue.

[ck4829]

49. Ouch

[klook]

20. There's never "enough time"

to fix a broken system that benefits Republicans, it seems... It’s never “the right time.”

You damn sure better believe they’d fix it lickety-split if the problem was hurting their chances.

I say we require paper ballots, and send them all to Oregon. Those folks up there seem to have figured out a good system for conducting fair and verifiable elections. Then again, they actually care about democracy.

[colsohlibgal]

22. They Can't Win Legitimately

Moscow Mitch and his ilk know they have to cheat to win. There are way more of us them then.

If we had no gimmick like the Electoral College and went to Foolproof monitored and counted paper ballots the Republicans might go the way of the Whigs.

[FiveGoodMen]

30. No, they'd just keep recruiting Nazis till they were over 50%

The preachers, pundits, hate-radio jocks ...

All the liars have to be stopped.

[ck4829]

50. Absolutely correct

[ancianita]

28. At the top of the DEF CON list of easily hackable machines.

Dominion Premier/Diebold AccuVote TSx

The AccuVote TSx is an electronic voting machine manufactured by Premier Voting Solutions, later acquired by Dominion Voting Systems. ...

The AccuVote TSx is currently in Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Missouri, Mississippi, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

During DEF CON, the Voting Village organized a mock election to demonstrate vulnerabilities in the AccuVote TSx. The software used in the demonstration was unmodified from the software that is still used widely. Additionally, there are older, potentially more vulnerable versions of the software still in use.

The mock election demonstration consisted of multiple elements:

● All voters used the same voter activation smart card without the card being reactivated with a device of any kind to allow the next voter to cast their ballot.

This is because the voter activation card was programmed to automatically reset itself after activating the device, therefore allowing it to be used to cast unlimited number of ballots.

● The election was programmed without using software provided by the vendor, therefore proving that a chain of custody of the election management software does not prevent new elections from being programmed.

This also indicates that third parties with no access to the election management system can create rogue election definitions which are indistinguishable from real elections.

● An attack can be distributed remotely with no physical access to the voting machine. Malware needed in this demonstration can be distributed with the ballot/election definition.

This also demonstrates the mechanism enabling a wholesale attack. Depending on how a particular county’s system is set up, there may be multiple centralized systems in the chain of the information flow to the voting machines, and compromising any of the links in the chain enables a wholesale attack.

● Paperless, unauditable systems are extremely vulnerable to this kind of attack, as the only record of a voter’s intent is in digital form.

(p 14)

[CuriousAsterisk]

36. Wow.....

This also indicates that third parties with no access to the election management system can create rogue election definitions which are indistinguishable from real elections.

Unbelievable. Just...unbelievable.

[ck4829]

42. Frightening