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Coalition for Good Governance
For Immediate Release
February 16, 2023
A Dozen Takeaways from Recent Court Filings in
Curling v. Raffensperger
ATLANTA- The Curling v. Raffensperger lawsuit, seeking to ensure that Georgia voters can exercise their constitutional right to cast an accountable vote, moved closer to trial in the latest court filings, consisting of thousands of pages of evidence. Coalition for Good Governance and our co-plaintiffs are fighting Secretary Raffensperger and the State Election Board’s commitment to the vendor over the voters, as they stubbornly cling to the deeply flawed, compromised touchscreen voting system, trampling voters’ rights and democratic principles in the process. The information, newly public, is summarized and referenced here to help the press, lawmakers, law enforcement, voting rights organizations, county officials, candidates and voters know the key facts about the system and the state’s irresponsible decisions. We believe it will help a broader audience understand why we plaintiffs and the community of voting system security experts insist on using hand marked paper ballots (voted in private), tabulated in public by well-tested optical scanners, with outcomes verified in public Risk Limiting Audits.
Plaintiffs recently filed a massive trove of documents detailing the worsening failures of Georgia’s voting system. Most of the documents have not been seen before by the public.[1] Access to this mountain of evidence should provide interested parties with a clearer understanding of the high risk nature of permitting Georgia’s election outcomes be determined by the compromised BMD touchscreen voting system.
The twelve key takeaways below were selected from hundreds of important facts detailed in the thousands of pages just filed. We have posted the underlying documents for public review and have summarized twelve key findings. An explanation of the filings and how to click through to the supporting documents is at the end of this document. (Page references are the blue PACER ECF Document page numbers.)
1) Georgia’s BMD touchscreen voting system is less secure than the old Diebold paperless system declared unconstitutional by the federal court in 2019, earlier in our case. (Curling Br. p. 16; Halderman Decl. 1631-31 ¶ 11) The paper ballot created by the touchscreen is not trustworthy. (Curling Br. p. 36; SAF 395) The Secretary of State and State Election Board have no experts who recommend the state’s BMD touchscreen system. (Curling Br. p. 14-15)
2) The federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) validated the vulnerabilities discovered and described in Dr. Alex Halderman’s 100 page report on Georgia’s BMD system. CISA recommended 13 mitigations in June 2022. (Curling Br. p. 18 of 85) Sec. Raffensperger and the State Election Board have made no efforts to take such steps. (Curling Br. p.19 of 85) Most of the State Election Board members never read Dr. Halderman’s report explaining the system vulnerabilities. (Curling Br. 17-18) Even senior SOS staff with security responsibilities chose not to read the damning report (Curling Br. p 17 of 85), although the state’s voting systems expert did not disagree with Dr. Halderman’s findings. (Curling Br. p 17)
3) Secretary of State’s Chief Information Officer ordered Fortalice, the agency’s cybersecurity expert, which had found many serious agency system vulnerabilities, including four “High” risks, to stop putting election-related security reports in writing (Curling Br. p 19) and just “phone them in.” (Doc. 1628-31 Beaver Deposition Tr. 71:18-72:18)
4) Georgia’s voting system uses a July 2015 version of Windows installed in 2019. Although 101 critical Windows software updates have been issued since 2019, they have not been installed on Georgia’s system. (Curling Br. p 29) The system is absolutely vulnerable to malware. (Halderman Decl. Doc. 1631-31) Georgia’s claimed defenses of “air-gapping” are false. (Curling Br. p 20) There are instances when the system is indirectly connected to the internet (Curling Br. p 29), and it is continuously vulnerable to having malware inserted from removable media. (Curling Br. p 45) The system is at highly elevated risk of cyberattack. (SAF 151, 314, 319) Vote stealing malware can be deployed without detection in a BMD system. (Curling Br. p 15; SAF 396, 401)
5) Secretary Raffensperger admitted that unauthorized actors with extended access to the software, can change election results. (CGG Br. p 64; Audio link timestamp 42:20) But he claimed extended access is not possible, although the statewide software breach in Coffee County had already occurred a year before, as the nation has seen from the damning video surveillance recordings.
6) The breach of the state’s voting system and unauthorized copying of the software in Coffee County poses a serious threat to Georgia’s future elections (Curling Br. p. 27) as the risk of attack is materially increased (SAF 314, 315). Georgia’s software is now “In the Wild.” (CGG Br. p 66) Doug Logan (Cyber Ninjas) converted the system files obtained in Coffee to a virtual machine, and uploaded it for his colleagues to work with, as if it were a local voting system installation. (SAF 300) This permits potential attackers to develop and test malware for ready deployment in future Georgia elections. An adversary can craft modifications to the software and refine them to make them more potent and less detectable. (Skoglund Decl. ¶ 183). State officials have done nothing to address this materially increased risk.
7) The State officials cannot keep their stories straight about the Coffee County January 2021 breach. Raffensperger claims his office knew of the breach just after it happened, and his investigators kept “digging deep,” but states that Coffee officials lied to his investigators. (Exh. 216.) Raffensperger claims they interviewed Misty Hampton in May 2021 (SAF 356). Ms. Hampton testified that they did not attempt to interview her on the issue. (Doc. 1610 Hampton Deposition Tr: 229:6-10) However, state officials can produce no notes from that purported interview with Hampton. The investigators who were “digging deep” put nothing in writing. (Curling Br. p. 32) Yet, his attorneys told the Court the first Secretary of State heard of the breach was after Plaintiffs raised the issue in February 2022, more than a year later after all the undocumented claimed “deep digging.” (Tr. 21:7- 22:8) There were unexplained server password disclosures on YouTube (SAF 72, 336), and subsequent password changes SOS claimed they could not obtain or defeat. Yet the State Election Board (#2020-250) complaint only charged Coffee officials with an unlocked door on the server room in their December 2021 meeting.
8) Secretary of State’s office has no documentation of their seizing and changing out of the potentially compromised Coffee server. (Curling Br. p. 32) After they seized the Coffee County server in June 2021 (purportedly because they could not access it with the changed password (SAF 283)), there is no evidence that they interviewed Coffee County officials about this server. (SAF 375) They waited until August 2022 to engage the GBI. (Curling Br. p 33) Further, State officials claim to have no written communications with Dominion about the statewide voting system breach that occurred in Coffee County in January 2021.
9) State officials’ forensic expert was engaged by the State’s litigation attorneys in May 2021 (SAF 361), but he was only given access to the seized Coffee server 13 months later, in late June, 2022. (SAF 362) Although the server is a key piece of evidence in the litigation and the SEB’s Coffee “investigation,” the SOS’s expert did not preserve the seized server contents intact. Instead they instructed their expert to change the server password (SAF 363) thereby changing hundreds of files on the server and destroying its forensic fidelity before providing Plaintiffs with a copy. (SAF 371) The State has provided no explanation for modifying contents of the evidence from this original seized server.
10) Cathy Latham, Eric Chaney and others testified dishonestly under oath (Curling Br. p. 27) when questioned about their role in the Coffee County breach, and also took the Fifth Amendment. (Curling Br. footnote 13) The fact that people who facilitated and participated in the breach sought to cover it up, including lying under oath, suggests the nefarious intent behind the breach.
11) Vulnerabilities cannot be mitigated by Georgia’s “audits.” Georgia’s so-called Risk-Limiting Audits (“RLAs”) were so flawed, they were not genuine or effective audits (SAF 384), which proved nothing about who won the 2022 SOS election or the 2020 election. (CGG Br. p. 67-68; SAF 387, 389; SMF 295, 303, 304)
12) Georgians’ rights to “absolute ballot secrecy” continue to be violated in multiple ways because of the failed design of the Dominion system. Voters’ touchscreen vote selections are displayed to others in the polling place violating the state and federal law. (CGG Br. p 82-84). Voters’ scanned ballots are stored on memory cards in order cast and assigned predictable numbers permitting ballots to be connected to the voter in some cases. (CGG Br. p 85-86) The majority of Fulton’s Election Board acknowledged the fact that their BMD voters are not permitted to vote with secret ballots. (CGG Br. p. 84) The Carter Center reported that the secrecy of the voting process was undermined. (CGG. Br. p. 85) Despite millions of ballots cast since January 2020 in violation of secret ballot laws, and many voter complaints, officials refuse to take action to defend voters’ legal rights to a secret ballot protections.
In the documents, researchers will find scores of damning facts evidencing reckless decision making, stunning indifference to cybersecurity, institutional incompetence, and lack of candor on the part of the Secretary of State, his staff and the State Election Board.
The evidence clearly supports the Plaintiffs’ position that the case must move promptly to trial, seeking a court ruling to stop the required use of the BMD touchscreens for all polling place voters. (Doc. 1624 CGG brief; Doc. 1636 Curling brief) This evidence was filed in response to the Defendants’ Motions for Summary Judgement. Unfortunately, the court must intervene to force the essential changes that the State officials will not undertake on their own.
Guide to the Documents
The folders linked here contain the public versions of the filings related to the Defendants Motion for Summary Judgement.
CGG Brief 1624 https://coaltionforgoodgovernance.sharefile.com/d-s66c3d4be5b7d4227af512b8a056f86d3
CGG Exhibits to Brief https://coaltionforgoodgovernance.sharefile.com/d-se4fe1890ab5746189d1d51e1f561f697
Curling Brief 1636 https://coaltionforgoodgovernance.sharefile.com/d-sf9bcf0652116461590a87b71c7c902c2
(SAF) Joint Statement of Additional Facts https://coaltionforgoodgovernance.sharefile.com/d-se6441cbda6a94adba4461b5ad31f1ce2
(SMF response) Joint Response to Defendants’ Statement of Material Facts
https://coaltionforgoodgovernance.sharefile.com/d-s675cb94ad80f4383a79f07db00810e32
Exhibits https://coaltionforgoodgovernance.sharefile.com/d-s4270efda13fa4671a86f43e73f207df4
Additional Related Files (including Depositions and Declarations)
https://coaltionforgoodgovernance.sharefile.com/d-sbddfa88f37a84031a69870c52d33cb82
Defendants’ Motions for Summary Judgement
https://coaltionforgoodgovernance.sharefile.com/d-sf13bc2e1f38f48098539c3012b470a58
Additional Filings by Defendants
https://coaltionforgoodgovernance.sharefile.com/d-sd9ea2e78c104474e9f176b5070345485
Index to filings (To be Completed)
https://coaltionforgoodgovernance.sharefile.com/d-s00e8803b764b448c9332bb7f0b1d34c7
Kevin Skoglund (CGG Expert) Report and Testimony –Coffee County (to be completed)
https://coaltionforgoodgovernance.sharefile.com/d-s3702ccf932f3452bb45c02c8125aa906
Index to Recent CGG Members’ Declarations
https://coaltionforgoodgovernance.sharefile.com/d-s35f8b7a9463e42e99a6277c1cf8a5d51
Coalition for Good Governance is a non-partisan non-profit 501(c )(3) organization dedicated to the issues of election security, voter privacy, and government transparency, particularly in the arena of public elections.
Contact:
Marilyn Marks
Marilyn@USCGG.org
704.292.9802
[1] Most previously sealed documents have been redacted and made public, with our policy of maximum possible disclosure while obeying the Court’s rulings on sealed documents such as Dr. Halderman’s July 2021 report, and while honoring other parties’ confidentiality designations.
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