New accusations of elections mismanagement and fraud surfaced after yesterday’s firing of two Fulton County employees who were seen shredding 300 applications related to Georgia’s municipal elections. State law requires election officials to preserve elections documents related to primary or general elections for 24 months after the election.
Critics say this especially makes Secretary of State Brad Raffensp[erger look foolish, since he has been criticized for once claiming that the 2020 November election was, “safe, secure [and] honest.” This declaration led one of his GOP secretary of state opponents, David Belle Isle, to remark, “Since it was so fair, he didn’t feel he needed to investigate it, and joined many in the media in excoriating any naysayers.
With his 2022 re-election almost an impossibility, Raffensperger’s office now is forced to investigate the latest Fulton County elections office mess. And he is even calling for a federal Justice Department probe.
“Brad has now completed the circle and held every possible opinion about the legitimacy of the election disaster he oversaw,” Belle Isle says. “It was immediately apparent to most observers that he failed the citizens of Georgia miserably, but it took Brad almost a year to come to the same conclusion.”
Another Raffensperger opponent, U.S. Rep. Jody Hice, blasts Raffensperger for failing to implement needed statewide election reform— especially in populous Fulton County— long before the 2020 primaries and general election.
Raffensperger fights document release on vulnerabilities
Any objective observer of Peach State politics knows the recent history of both parties calling for significant election security changes and reform. Even the federal courts knew that Georgia was going into the 2020 election with a flawed system.
A year ago this month, U.S. District Court Judge Amy Totenberg ruled just three weeks prior to the Nov. 3 election that she had serious concerns with the state’s Dominion voting system but declined to interfere so close to the vote— especially since it was the secretary of state’s job to ensure election security.
In this context, a prominent Georgia lawyer emailed InsiderAdvantage the following:
“The Curling case in federal district court in Atlanta, before Judge Totenberg, has been a fertile source for those contesting the most recent elections.
“Professor (J. Alex) Halderman of the University of Michigan, long an elections expert (in 2017 he testified before the U.S. Senate on Dominion system vulnerabilities), filed a 25,000-word expert declaration in the case on September 21st which remains under seal. Professor Halderman (no fan of former President Donald Trump) has requested that the report be unsealed so that he can provide it to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Prof. Halderman has briefed CISA as to the scope of his report, and CISA apparently wants the report. Halderman asserts that he has identified vulnerabilities in the Dominion system, in use in 16 states, where nefarious actors will likely undermine the upcoming 2022 elections; the primaries are 9 months away.
“Raffsenberger objects to the release. Big damned surprise. Doesn’t even want CISA to see it.”
