May 5, 2019
On Tuesday, May 7, we will be explaining to the GA Supreme Court why GA's elections must be transparent and accountable. The Secretary of State must not be permitted to configure all the voting machines and tabulators and count the ballots "in the dark." He is insisting in court that the ballot layout, tabulating instructions, tabulations, and ballot displays on touchscreen screens are super-secret and no one but his staff can know about them. And that any court case to challenge the process must protect his ability to count the ballots behind closed doors----in secret with secret software.
We were not permitted to have any discovery in the case. The Judge said that she was "getting pressure" to resolve the case, and that there was no time for discovery. She didn't disclose the source of the pressure. I'm referring to the 127,000 lost votes case in the Lt. Gov. election, with racial targeting impacting African American neighborhood precincts far more harshly.
Instead of electronic discovery, she ordered Fulton and Gwinnett to produce 700,000 pdfs 2 days before trial. They didn't. But Fulton lied and said that they did! What could we have possibly done with 700,000 pdfs in 2 days?? She denied our motions for a delay in the case to try to get evidence.
The misrepresentations that the SOS and the counties are making are just outrageous! They have been dishonest about the machines, the coding and the evidence that they are hiding.
We are asking the GA Supreme Court to reverse the Judge's errors and send the case back to the trial court, and permit discovery and assign a new judge.
Here is what a group of expert scientists said about the nonsense arguments the state is making about why they must withhold the details of the voting system.
Please help us with the costs of these multiple lawsuits. We are also suing in federal court to require hand marked paper ballots. We are challenging both the DREs and the new Ballot Marking Devices. Please help fund this campaign, just like you would fund a campaign for your favorite candidate. If you want them to win, it is an investment in the machinery of a campaign. The machinery of a lawsuit is very expensive as well. We will work to see a return on your investment. Your gifts to our non-partisan, non-profit organization are tax-deductible.
Thank you for your support.
Previous posts:
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Today the fight in GA over secure voting systems just got bigger and even more important for the future! We need your help immediately to fund the necessary battle awaiting us now. A very flawed and corrupt bill (HB316) that will waste $200 million on a new voting system that cannot be secured or audited passed the Senate and is now days away from final passage and a signature by Gov. Kemp. This new voting system wouldn’t pass muster with any rational person who wants fair elections! And it does not meet the demands of our federal anti-electronic voting lawsuit nor the
Court’s ruling on what is needed in a new voting system in Georgia.
We will fight any attempted implementation of this proposed BMD system in that case. In fact, discovery begins very soon as the case is just now reopening after Kemp and Raffensperger lost at the federal appeals court. The discovery process will immediately focus on the 127,000 lost votes in the Lt. Governor race and the targeting of African American voters whose votes were not counted, as well as other widespread irregularities.
If GA officials are foolish enough to buy these flawed machines, we will immediately challenge that effort within our case. This is expensive work! Although we at CGG take no compensation, attorneys, experts, clerical help, services must be paid. We need your immediate help to continue our efforts. Help Georgia get a new and secure voting system through court order, since the officials will not do the right thing on their own.
Your donations are tax deductible.
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Lt. Gov voting system litigation:
We issued the following press release today to tell the public of the latest alarming and devastating news from Georgia's election in November. Please help us get to the bottom of what happened here.
Our federal election security lawsuit goes into the discovery mode immediately, given that we just received a favorable ruling from the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. With your help to support the expensive discovery process, we can get long overdue answers that only the litigation process will extract.
Georgia’s 127,000 Missing Votes—Disproportionate Vote Loss in African American Neighborhoods
Atlanta—As previously reported by the
Coalition for Good Governance, more than 127,000 votes appear to be missing in November’s election for Lieutenant Governor. Today, the Coalition released a preliminary
report revealing the disproportionate loss of votes in heavily African American neighborhood precincts. The findings are a result of the Coalition’s analyses of publicly reported results and demographics of voters in the 2018 mid-term election. The Coalition’s report contains detailed findings and statistical analyses.
The report findings are summarized as follows:
- Approximately 127,000 fewer votes were recorded in the 2018 Lt. Governor’s contest than experts estimate should have been cast.
- Statistical analyses and experts’ reports expose a dramatically increased number of missing votes (undervotes or drop-off in votes compared to the top-of-the-ballot contest) for the Lt. Governor’s contest in primarily African American neighborhood precincts.
- Voting machine defects and misprogramming are the likely culprits responsible for the significant number of missing votes. Some voters reported touchscreen machines that did not properly display the Lt. Governor’s contest, and others reported machine screen malfunction and “vote flipping” when they attempted to vote.
- The extreme drop-off in votes in the Lt. Governor’s contest when compared to the Governor’s contest is significantly out of line with historic patterns and does not appear in any other 2018 statewide contest, including those contests that were much further “down ballot” than the Lt. Governor’s race. The drop-off indicates that 63,718 fewer votes were recorded for Lt. Governor than for the Commissioner of Agriculture, the statewide contest with the second-lowest participation rate.
- The extreme pattern of missing Lt. Governor’s contest votes only occurred in votes cast on the touchscreen machines. The larger-than-average number of undervotes did not occur in votes cast on paper ballots. Mail-in ballot voters voted down the ballot in typical historical voting patterns.
- There is no meaningful correlation between new voters and the Lt. Governor undervote, debunking officials’ excuse that newly registered voters were confused about the need to vote separately for Governor and Lt. Governor.
- Forensic examinations of the machine programming must be promptly undertaken to obtain answers, locate the source of the errors, and, if appropriate, hold officials accountable.
- Electronic voting systems must be immediately abandoned and paper ballots adopted so that no future elections are conducted on Georgia’s unauditable machines.
- Governor Kemp, Secretary Raffensperger, and legislative leaders must abandon their plan to adopt a new ballot-marking-device electronic voting system that, like the current system, is unauditable and vulnerable to problems of the type experienced in November’s election.
Marilyn Marks, Executive Director for the Coalition for Good Governance, said, “The findings are deeply disturbing and difficult to accept, but the statistics and evidence show an undeniable pattern of extreme numbers of missing votes, concentrated in precincts in predominately African American neighborhoods. It is imperative that voters, voting rights advocates, and civic leaders demand clear and factual answers. Our pending lawsuits are poised to obtain the technical answers through the discovery process, but the public deserves more immediate answers. Georgia’s voters must also call for an immediate halt to electronic touchscreen voting, including the proposed unauditable touchscreen system that Governor Kemp and Secretary Raffensperger are promoting despite warnings from the nation’s leading experts in voting system security.”
Bruce Brown, Atlanta-based attorney for the Coalition and other plaintiffs in two election security lawsuits added: “It clearly is in the public interest to get to the bottom of this—to figure out what caused the votes to go missing when cast on electronic voting machines but not when the votes were cast on paper ballots. The Secretary of State should be leading the effort to figure this out, but instead is resisting every effort to get to the truth.”
Coalition for Good Governance is a small, volunteer-run, nonpartisan, nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization focused on election transparency and verifiability, currently devoting its resources to addressing Georgia’s failed election system.
Your contribution today will directly support the legal expenses incurred by Coalition for Good Governance, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization (501(c)(3)) focused on election security and transparency.
