One day after the U.S. District Court of North Georgia banned the current Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting system beginning in 2020, plaintiffs in the case motioned to block a proposed new unverifiable BMD voting system.
The motion was filed on the grounds it impairs Georgia voters’ Constitutional right to vote because the voting system is not verifiable to the voters and evidence in the DRE trial has proven the state incapable of running electronic-based elections of any kind.
The Georgia legislature and Secretary of State’s (SOS) office previously authorized up to $150 million to purchase ballot marking devices (BMDs) from Dominion Voting Systems. However, the proposed Dominion ICP/ ICC 5.5.3-0002 scanners accumulate hidden votes that the ICX 5.5.10.30 BMD embeds in encrypted bar codes. Voters see
and verify only text selections, not actual votes that are counted.
Evidence from the trial confirmed previous VoterGA claims with stunning new details:
– Despite claims of no internet connectivity, the ballot building system that preps all counties and machines before all elections were exposed for years thru 2017;
– When the exposure was found the state made no attempt to assess any damage;
– Instead, directors allowed the servers to be wiped just after a lawsuit was filed;
– Despite claims, the revised 2018 ballot building procedure is “air gapped” most ballots are received from work-at-home contractors via the internet;
– The SOS office hired a security assessment firm but directed them NOT to look at election although they were fully capable to do so;
– In 2017, that firm found 22 “serious” security errors in the SOS public server that handles licensing and corporations but only 3 were mitigated by November 2018;
– Despite claims of penetration testing, the SOS tests only 1 of 27,000 machines and did not reveal to the court that their firm had penetrated the SOS server;
Judge Amy Totenberg declared some Defendants’ contentions as “flatly not credible”. She required the state to implement a backup plan of hand-marked paper ballots using Dominion scanners if the BMD system is not ready for the March Presidential Primary.
Two sets of plaintiffs originally sued the state. The motion was filed by Donna Curling, Donna Price and Geoffrey Schoenberg of Georgians for Verified Voting represented by Morrison & Foerster lead attorney David Cross. The Coalition of Good Governance, led by Marilyn Marks and lead attorney Bruce Brown confirmed they will file a similar, more comprehensive motion likely to add more expert security and auditability risks. Those plaintiffs include Ricardo Davis, Meagan Missett and William and Laura Digges.