Georgia: The Epicenter of America’s Corrupted Electronic Elections

Jennifer Cohn
Jun 30, 2018·24 min read
By Jennifer Cohn
@je
In 2002, Georgia became the first state to deploy paperless unauditable touchscreen direct record electronic (“DRE”) voting machines statewide. Although the state is in the process of replacing those machines, officials have selected controversial new touchscreen voting machines — Ballot Marking Devices (“BMDs”) intended for use by all voters — as a primary voting system rather than unhackable hand marked paper ballots. Experts warn that, unlike hand marked paper ballots, the new machines cannot provide the basis for meaningful manual audits.
Numerous security lapses have also tainted recent elections in the state, providing the impetus for a pending federal lawsuit that seeks to move the state to hand marked paper ballots as a primary voting system, with BMDs deployed only for those voters who are unable to hand mark their ballots and who choose to use them despite the extra security risk.
The article below discusses the Georgia 6th District special election of 2017, which led to this historic litigation, as well as the corruption that has plagued Georgia’s elections from 2002 through the present.
In 2017, Georgia politician Tom Price joined the Trump administration, leaving his House seat in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District vacant.
The vacancy represented one of the first realistic opportunities for Democrats to “flip” a House seat from red to blue in the aftermath of the 2016 election. The race was billed by the media as a “referendum on Trump” and a “bellwether” for 2018.
The national significance of the contest brought forth a flood of advertising and organization, making it the most expensive House race of all time.
The top two contenders were Republican Karen Handel (an anti-choice, anti-LGBTQ, pro-gun “Christian”) and Democrat Jon Ossoff (who is pro-choice on abortion, pro-gay rights, and less gun happy than Handel).
But even before the first ballot was cast, election integrity advocates and IT experts were sounding the alarm about the integrity of the race. Georgia is one of just five states that still exclusively uses paperless voting machines. Paperless voting machines are an especially attractive target for hackers because there is nothing to compare against the electronic tally to confirm whether it was manipulated. Thus, the only way to know if a paperless machine has been hacked is to conduct a forensic audit, which courts have consistently refused to allow based on the purportedly proprietary nature of the vendors’ software.
Diebold had entered the voting machine business just a few months prior with its acquisition of Global Election Systems, a company founded by three criminals.
At the time, Georgia’s Secretary of State was Cathy Cox, who allowed Diebold to use her image on its promotional materials
Diebold had entered the voting machine business just a few months prior with its acquisition of Global Election Systems, a company founded by three criminals.
Global’s Senior VP was a convicted felon, Jeffrey Dean, who had served time for sophisticated crimes involving “computer tampering.” According to the Guardian, Dean was also the company’s senior programmer.
Global brought on Dean several months before the 2000 Bush v. Gore election. Soon after hiring Dean, Global hired convicted cocaine trafficker John Elder to oversee punch card printing in several states.
https://jennycohn1.medium.com/georgia-6-and-the-voting-machine-vendors-87278fdb0cdf