ATLANTA (CN) — On the second day of the federal trial over whether Georgia's current voting machine system has vulnerabilities that leave it susceptible to cybersecurity risks, voters testified they would prefer to vote by hand-marked paper ballots.
"I feel like I'm handing my ballot to someone behind a screen," Donna Price, a Georgia voter and plaintiff in the case, testified. "I don't trust it."
Price is one of multiple voters and members of the Coalition for Good Governance, a nonprofit that focuses on election transparency, who filed the lawsuit against Georgia's secretary of state's office and state officials in 2017.
However, before the trial began, U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg said that she can not order the state to implement a paper ballot system as the plaintiffs propose. In a 135-page ruling issued in November, Totenberg said 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.
The plaintiffs argue that because their vote is captured in a QR code under the Dominion ballot marking devices, they have no way of ensuring it accurately conveys their intended ballot selections or if it is counted as cast. And while a list of the voter's ballot selections are printed out under the QR code for them to verify, they argue it is "burdensome" for the voters to remember to do so.
Price testified she would have "reasonable confidence" if she knew the voting system was based on the knowledge of election security and technology experts. Much of the plaintiffs' evidence in the case rests on an analysis of the Dominion system conducted by their expert witness and University of Michigan computer scientist, J. Alex Halderman. The court previously 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. He is expected to testify later in the trial.
Price said that she trusts the "people behind scenes" while flying on an airplane, but not while voting. She added that she prefers to vote by an absentee ballot, but said that it can be difficult to ensure you receive one from the county in time to vote.
Plaintiff William Digges testified he also prefers to vote by an absentee ballot because it provides him with a physical, paper record of his vote.
Attorneys representing the secretary of state's office argued that even hand-marked paper ballots are vulnerable to potential risks. They also noted that none of the plaintiffs have evidence of their vote not being accurately counted by a Dominion voting machine.
"You don't think that someone could destroy your absentee ballot?" attorney Javier Pico-Prats from the Robbins Firm in Atlanta, asked Digges on cross-examination.
"I don't know," Digges responded.
Another witness who took the stand Wednesday said that she feels a lack of secrecy with Georgia's machine voting system, because anyone could potentially walk behind your screen and see your vote.
Fulton County resident Aileen Nakamura said that she prefers to vote by an absentee ballot and would like to vote in-person using hand-marked paper ballots. While Nakamura is not a plaintiff in the case, she serves as the assistant secretary for the Coalition for Good Governance.
"I have the voting privacy, no one can hack my paper ballot. I don't have to worry about QR codes or computer programming errors," Nakamura testified.
She also suggested full manual audits for every election, to which the state argued would rely on the printout of the voter's ballot selections listed under the scanned QR code.
Nakamura said that for years, she has observed elections at polling locations across the state, including the November 2019 municipal elections in Cobb County that were conducted using hand-marked paper ballots. She said she didn't observe any issues with the hand-marked paper ballots and that the process ran "smooth" and "simple."
The county had volunteered to test a new paper-ballot contingency plan that was developed in case the state's newly purchased Dominion voting machines weren't fully up and running by 2020.
In August 2019, Judge Totenberg ordered the state to update its previously used direct-recording electronic voting machine system after agreeing with the plaintiffs' original claims that it was outdated and "highly susceptible to manipulation and malfunction."
But the plaintiffs 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.
The trial kicked off Tuesday and is expected to last at least three weeks.
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