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February 1st marked the end of the Curling vs Raffensperger 4 week bench trial conducted by District Federal Court Judge Amy Totenberg. This long running case was started in 2018 to challenge Georgia’s previous electronic voting system provided by Diebold. In an earlier court order, Georgia was required to discontinue the use of the Diebold direct recording equipment which consisted of a touch screen but no verifiable paper audit trail. Since then, Georgia invested $107 million in a new system from Dominion Election Systems which has brought its own controversies with an unreadable proprietary QR code that is utilized to tabulate a voters selections. In fact, Judge Totenberg ruled in an earlier opinion that the system is unverifiable to the voter and violates 2 Georgia statutes. The Federalist has provided a downloadable PDF from each days proceedings which can be found here. So far this Georgia General Assembly Session, there no movement to ditch the Dominion system. The Curling case represents a new hope in relief for Georgians.

Some of the key takeaways from this trial were:

• Dr. Alex J. Halderman flipped votes in a Ballot Marking Device (BMD) with a ball point pen. This is the 2nd time this has occurred in the presence of Judge Totenberg. The first time was 3 years ago and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has not made any attempts to upgrade the software suite even after 4 other Election Assistance Commission (EAC) approved updates have been available.
• Testimony from SOS office staff indicates that no one in the SOS office is in charge of cybersecurity of Georgia’s election system and that this has been outsourced to Dominion.

The following video is from a press conference conducted on February 8, 2024, by Garland Favorito of VoterGA. Ricardo Davis, a co-founder of VoterGA, was also a co-plaintiff in the case and this press conference highlights the key evidence put on the record by his attorney, David Oles. Opening statement, evidence summary and closing presentation slides can be found here on the VoterGA site.

What is Georgia “leadership” afraid of?  At a recent GOP Fish Fry in Perry, Georgia, election integrity apparel and vendors were banned.  See the revealing actions of political censorship and admissions from Governor Kemp that “if you give anybody a voting computer, they can hack it”.  

All we’re seeking is elections that we can trust.  We need hand marked paper ballots, publicly hand counted at the precinct on the day of election.  

Election integrity activists packed the room again at the December 19, 2023 Georgia State Election Board meeting. Of important note for this meeting, Joe Rossi originally had two cases that were to be discussed before the board. Case #SEB2023-025 which had been investigated and placed in the category “Recommended for Referral to the Attorney General’s Office”. This case involved 17,852 missing ballot images and 4,081 double counted batches in Fulton County for the 2nd machine count in the 2020 General Election. On the Friday before the SEB meeting, this case was continued (pulled) from the agenda. A second case SEBBI2023-001 was a board inquiry case also brought forward by Joe Rossi calling for the Georgia State Election Board to investigate SOS Brad Raffensperger for violations of Georgia’s Election Code. For details on both of these cases see Rossi video on Voice of Rural America with BKP.

After the resignation of Judge Duffy as SEB Chairman, there were only 4 remaining board members. In a surprising move, interim Chairman Matt Mashburn voted to create a tie (2-2) on the decision to investigate SOS Raffensperger in the SEBBI2023-001 case. It all seemed pre-planned as the meeting was opened by Mashburn with a discussion about the SEB not formally adopting Robert’s Rules of Order (RRO) for their proceedings only to use them as a guide. RRO allows for the chairman to vote to break a tie. In this case, it was used to create a tie so the measure failed. A second motion was passed to refer this matter the Georgia Legislature.

Again, with a packed room, activists filled all the public comments speaking spots in the Part 1 video below. Go to 02:36:00 for the public comments.

During the 12.19.23 State Election Board, election integrity activists held a press conference admonishing the SEB on the removal of Joe Rossi’s case #SEB2023-025, which had been investigated and placed in the category of “Recommend referral to the Attorney General for criminal prosecution”. In addition, at the urging of Rossi, a new type of case had been created case #SEBBI2023-01 for a board inquiry on whether the SEB could investigate the Secretary of State for violating Georgia election laws. See separate post for video of the SEB meeting.

On November 28th in Perry, Georgia, election integrity activists met to hear from Dr. Doug Frank for a presentation on “Follow the Data – Election Fraud in Georgia”

Thanks for Ted Metz for recording.

Again, election integrity activists visit the Gold Dome to call the legislators and the governor to come together and add fixing Georgia’s broken election system on to the agenda.

Tuesday, November 14th, the Grady County Board of Commissioners granted us a Paper Please Workshop to present on going to Emergency Paper Ballots under Georgia O.C.G.A. 21-2-324 and Rules and Regulations 183-1-12-.11(2)(c)&(d). Unfortunately, we were not successful at convincing them.  Watch the proceedings here and feel free to use our presentation below.  

On November 10th, federal court Judge Amy Totenberg issued a 135 page order in the Curling vs. Raffensperger case for a bench trial scheduled for January 9, 2024.  She had previously declared that the QR code that is printed on the ballot selection summary was in violation of Georgia O.C.G.A. 21-2-300, which states “electronic ballot markers shall produce paper ballots which are marked with the elector’s choices in a format readable by the elector.”  Yes, there is a printed summary of your selections but only the QR code is utilized in the tabulation.  We will be watching this case closely as it proceeds to trial. You can read the full order below.

On November 1st, the Georgia Senate Ethics Committee met in Atlanta. The purpose was to inquire why the Secretary of State had not initiated an upgrades of the electronic voting software and other cybersecurity risks. There was also a packed room of election integrity advocates, some ready to speak during public comment portion.  The meeting started with approximately 14 state senators to hear from the SOS office and representatives from Dominion.  Secretary of State Raffensperger was notably absent.  By the time the public comment portion started, 10 of the state senators had left, as well as the representatives from the SOS office. If one of your senators is on the Senate Ethics Committee, you might want to inquire if they stayed to hear from the public or if they left and why.  You can watch the proceedings here. Or, scroll down below in the top left to the 11/1/2023 Ethics video.