A judge threw out a DeKalb County Republican Party lawsuit Friday that claimed Georgia’s voting system was made vulnerable by the public disclosure of security features and computer code.
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee dismissed the case because Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger complied with state law when he certified the Dominion voting system as “safe and practicable” before it went into use in 2020.
Raffensperger has defended the security of Georgia’s voting machines, saying that alleged vulnerabilities to hacking or malware couldn’t be exploited in real-world conditions.
Voting computers are protected by locks, seals and election workers in precincts. Equipment is tested before elections, and results are verified with audits and recounts.
“Although applicant may firmly believe that the secretary’s current processes are ‘nonsensical’ and ‘appalling,’ and good-faith concerns over how to better secure our elections should be taken seriously, this matter is currently one that must be deferred to the policymaking branches,” McAfee wrote in the dismissal.
DeKalb Republican Party Chair Marci McCarthy said she’s disappointed by the outcome of the case.
“We’re remaining steadfast in our commitment to ensuring fitness, faith, integrity and trust in our elections,” McCarthy said. “I’m very concerned about the vulnerability of these systems going into our elections.”
Credit: Curtis Compton / Curtis.Compton@
Credit: Curtis Compton / Curtis.Compton@
The GOP lawsuit argued that the encryption keys that protect passwords and other information for voting machines were revealed within election databases released by four Georgia counties in response to records requests.
The Republican Party alleged that the Dominion voting system doesn’t meet federal standards and asked McAfee to order Raffensperger to take steps to meet those standards.
Attorneys for the secretary of state’s office said the voting system has been certified both by the federal government and by Raffensperger himself.
Raffensperger’s office didn’t respond to requests for comment Friday.
There’s no evidence that Georgia’s voting systems have ever been hacked or manipulated during an election, but election security advocates have said they’re vulnerable to potential tampering.
Former President Donald Trump and his supporters have falsely said that voting equipment was to blame for his loss to Joe Biden. A hand count and two machine counts showed that Biden defeated Trump in Georgia by about 12,000 votes.
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