January 1, 2024
The long-awaited federal court trial begins in only eight days, in our Curling v Raffensperger case, which seeks to safeguard Georgia’s 2024 elections by ending its required use of unreliable touchscreen ballot marking devices. We are prepped and armed to persuade the court to end the required use of touchscreen voting machines for the 2024 elections.
Since there are no cameras or recordings allowed in the court, once the trial begins, we will provide daily updates and summaries of the key events, testimony and developments in the trial. You won’t want to miss it. Please sign up here for press and public updates.
Day 8 Countdown: Why is Brad Raffensperger fighting the court order to testify at trial?
Despite his constant outspoken defense of the untrustworthy touchscreen voting machines to the media, legislature, and public, Secretary of State Raffensperger doesn’t want to testify and defend his decisions under oath at trial.
Raffensperger and his attorneys have long argued years that he shouldn’t have to, but the court recently ordered him to testify. He really doesn’t want to testify.
With the support of the State Election Board, Raffensperger appealed that decision to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, costing tens of thousands in taxpayer funds in legal fees and counting.
On Friday, we plaintiffs filed our response explaining why Raffensperger’s testimony is essential, given his inconsistent and often conflicting public statements about the state’s handling of the Coffee County breaches, and the general security problems in his hand-picked electronic touchscreen voting system.
We urge you to read the very informative and powerful brief drafted primarily by the Curling attorneys, our co-plaintiffs’ counsel, which pointedly notes that Raffensperger himself insisted that sworn testimony is essential to establishing the truth, writing in his book:
“ [t]he ultimate fact-check in the United States [], occurs in courts of law, where witnesses swear to tell the truth or risk imprisonment and where lawyers must also tell the truth or risk disbarment. If you want to know the truth, watch what happens in court.”
After peddling these platitudes, his refusal to testify is inconsistent at best.
Our brief also outlines key issues in the case and demonstrates why his statements under oath are essential. There’s much more that Plaintiffs plan to ask him in court. Stay tuned.
One of the most interesting topics he will be asked about is his conflicting stories about what he and his office knew about the Coffee County voting system breaches, when they knew it, and how his office responded. But this time it will be under oath.
(In early 2021, a group of operatives hired and directed by Sidney Powell and attorneys for the Trump campaign, unlawfully accessed and copied Georgia’s voting system software. Raffensperger has given conflicting answers as to when his office first learned of the breach, and what they did about it, ultimately officially claiming they didn’t learn of it until 2022, when we forced attention on it. These alleged acts of computer trespass and software theft have been charged in Fulton County District Attorney Fanni Willis’ racketeering indictment.)
11 Alive News previewed this story in 2022, but the public still has no answers on the conflicting timeline.
As we count down the days to trial, we will continue to preview key elements of the case. Stay with us. Tomorrow: how the voting software theft scandal in a small Georgia county was uncovered by our team, and how it ended up in a criminal RICO indictment.
Feel free to write us with any questions you have about the upcoming trial. (Marilyn@uscgg.org ) And sign up here for trial updates for the press and public.
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