https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/457593-judge-rules-georgia-must-phase-out-paperless-voting-machines-by-2020
[Now, let's make a requirement that all ballots must be printed on
recycled paper.
links in online article]
Judge rules Georgia must phase out paperless voting machines by 2020
By Maggie Miller - 08/15/19 03:07 PM EDT
A federal judge on Thursday ruled that the state of Georgia may not use
direct-recording electronic (DRE) voting machines in any election after
2019, but stopped short of mandating that the state switch to paper
ballots as had been requested.
In addition, the ruling from U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg in
Georgia also requires the state to develop contingency measures should
the rollout of machines with paper records not be complete by March 2020.
The nonprofit organization Coalition for Good Governance, along with a
group of Georgia citizens, had filed suit against the state to mandate
that only paper ballots be used in future elections, citing election
security concerns stemming from the use of outdated machines.
“The long and twisting saga of Georgia’s non-auditable DRE/GEMS voting
system — running on software of almost two decades vintage with
well-known flaws and vulnerabilities and limited cybersecurity — is
finally headed towards its conclusion,” Totenberg, an Obama appointee,
wrote in the ruling.
The decision was made in the midst of a fiery debate at the national
level over next steps around election security, with Republicans and
Democrats disagreeing over what, if anything, the federal government
should do heading into the 2020 cycle.
The debate over election security intensified following testimony from
former special counsel Robert Mueller in July when he said he expects
the Russians to attempt to interfere in U.S. elections in 2020, just as
his report said they did in 2016.
Marilyn Marks, the executive director of the Coalition for Good
Governance, said in a statement that she is “very pleased that the
voters of Georgia will see an end to the unconstitutional touchscreen
DRE voting systems plaguing their elections for 17 years.”
David Cross, a partner at Morrison and Foerster who represented the
group of Georgia citizens who filed the suit, described the decision as
“a big win for all Georgia voters and those working across the country
to secure elections and protect the right to vote."
"The court ordered Georgia to finally take critical steps it has long
refused to take to protect elections against interference and voters
against disenfranchisement," he said.
The ruling was made weeks after Georgia Secretary of State Brad
Raffensperger (R) announced that Dominion Voting Systems had been
awarded a multimillion dollar contract to implement a voter-verified
paper ballot system in the state prior to the March 2020 elections.
The contract was awarded due to a new law that requires the replacement
of all Georgia DRE voting machines with electronic ballot-marking
devices and optical scanners.
However, Marks announced on Thursday that the coalition would “promptly
file a legal challenge to the State’s decision to adopt this new
touchscreen electronic voting system that is just as insecure and
un-auditable as the current system.”
Raffensperger said in a statement that he is “pleased the Court endorsed
the policy decisions of the state’s elected officials to move to a new
paper ballot voting system in time for the 2020 elections while not
disrupting 2019 elections.”
“These activist plaintiffs continue fruitlessly attempting to force
their preferred policy outcomes on Georgia voters without success," he
said in the statement. "While we fully expect these activists and their
attorneys to incessantly use scare tactics to try to undermine Georgia
elections, their own experts admitted under oath that there is no
evidence of Georgia’s voting machines ever being compromised or not
accurately counting the votes of our citizens. The Secretary of State’s
office is already moving full steam ahead to implement Georgia’s new
paper ballot voting system in time for the March 2020 Presidential
Preference Primary.”
In her ruling, Totenberg pushed back against previous assertions by
Raffensperger that attacks on Georgia voting systems aren’t a potential
danger.
“The imminent threats of contamination, dysfunction, and attacks on
State and county voting systems, disparaged by the Secretary of State’s
representatives at the 2018 hearing virtually as a fantasy and still
minimized as speculative at the 2019 hearing, have been identified in
the most credible major national and state cybersecurity studies and
official government reports,” Totenberg wrote.
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