Federal trial over Dominion voting machine security kicks off in Georgia

ATLANTA (CN) — A bench trial began Tuesday in federal court over whether Georgia's current voting machine system has vulnerabilities that leave it susceptible to cybersecurity risks.

A group of Georgia voters and the Coalition for Good Governance, a nonprofit that focuses on election transparency, filed a lawsuit against the secretary of state's office and state officials in 2017.

U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg agreed with the plaintiffs that the direct-recording electronic voting machine system Georgia had been using since 2002 was outdated and "highly susceptible to manipulation and malfunction." In August 2019, she ordered the state to update its aging election system ahead of the 2020 primaries.

Georgia's Republican Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, entered a nearly $107 million contract with Dominion Voting Systems to install new ballot-counting devices that record votes in a barcode and print paper copies of the ballot for a voter’s review before being scanned.

But the plaintiffs in the case claim Dominion's new ballot marking devices are not "voter-verifiable, secure, or reliable" and have some of the same cybersecurity vulnerabilities posed by the outdated voting system. Much of their argument points to the January 2021 breach of voting machines at the Coffee County elections office, which has become a crucial incident in the sweeping racketeering indictment against former President Donald Trump and 18 of his allies accused of trying to overturn his 2020 presidential defeat.

They also argue that because their vote is captured in a QR code, they have no way of ensuring it accurately conveys their intended ballot selections and that it can't be meaningfully audited.

During the trial, the voter coalition intends to rely largely on evidence gathered from University of Michigan computer scientist J. Alex Halderman, one of their expert witnesses. The court allowed Halderman to access the voting machines, in which he produced a report indicating that the feasibility of a cyberattack could cause specific votes cast to be swapped or deleted, including through access to and alteration of the QR code.

Despite the machines providing a list of the voter's selections for them to review under the QR code, attorneys for the plaintiffs argued that it is "burdensome" for the voters to remember what the questions were for their choices.

It's the secretary of state's burden to ensure "a transparent, accurate, and objectively fair election process," David Cross, an attorney for the plaintiffs from the D.C. firm Morrison & Foerster, said during opening arguments.

Although the state's 2020 election gave rise to election fraud conspiracies that were promoted by Trump and his allies and are now at the center of various criminal charges against him, attorney Bruce Brown said his client's case, "is not about that."

But counsel representing the state argued that every election faces risks and that all forms of voting equipment and even hand-marked paper ballots are subject to vulnerabilities. Attorney Bryan Tyson, from the Atlanta based firm Taylor, English & Duma, argued the plaintiffs' claims are based solely on potential risks, and that none of them have experienced an actual burden on their right to vote.

"You will hear no evidence of any vote being altered by bad actors. No evidence of any malware altering elections, or evidence that they were prohibited from voting," Tyson told the court.

In a 135-page ruling issued in November, Totenberg said she can't order the state to implement a paper ballot system, as the plaintiffs had proposed. She added there are “pragmatic, sound remedial policy measures” that she could order or that the parties could agree upon such as eliminating QR codes on ballots and having scanners read human-legible text, using a broader scope and number of election audits, and implementing essential cybersecurity measures recommended by leading experts.

While the state had asked the judge to rule in its favor based on the arguments and facts in the case without going to trial, Totenberg concluded there are “material facts in dispute” that must be decided at trial.

Last week, a three-judge 11th Circuit panel ruled that Raffensperger won't be required to testify in the trial. They wrote in their ruling that high-ranking state officials aren't compelled to testify about their reasons for taking official actions unless there are “extraordinary circumstances.”

However, the secretary of state's chief operating officer Gabriel Sterling, state elections director Blake Evans and other members of the State Election Board are expected to be called in as witnesses. The trial is expected to last at least three weeks.

Follow @Megwiththenews

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