Marilyn Marks the Executive of the newly christened "Coalition for Good Governance" is celebrating the fourth of July by suing a bevy of Georgia election officials, including Secretary of State Brian Kemp, claiming that the results of Georgia's special election "cannot be known" due to "the insecurity of Georgia’s voting system and the lack of voter-verifiable paper ballots."
The suit goes into detail about the security breaches that took place prior to both rounds of Georgia's sixth district congressional race that eventually pitted former Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel against political newcomer and film producer Jon Ossoff. I published an article yesterday on Alternet about the suspect results of the election.
The suit points out that the election system website was left open on the internet from August of 2016 until March of 2017. It describes how during that time, a video was available instructing election officials, "to first download files from the Kennesaw State University Center for Election Systems website, put those files on a memory card, and insert that card into their local county voting systems." Since the normally secure aspects of the website were completely open to the public during that time, it is possible that an election worker downloaded compromised data from that website - as instructed by the official tutorial. This could have resulted in malicious software being loaded directly onto the voting machines.
The suit does not exaggerate when it says, "This would be a serious security concern."
It goes on to claim that the voting machines have not been re-certified since 2007, and are not currently authorized for use.
The suit claims that Kemp and other election officials "allowed the uncertified and compromised systems to be used in the Runoff" contrary to the requirements of the Georgia state constitution.
Marilyn Marks said in a phone conversation that "The machines are unfit" for use. According to the press release, she is seeking "to overturn the reported results of the Special Election and to order a new election." She is also attempting to prohibit the machines from being used in the upcoming November municipal elections.
She will hold a Facebook Live press conference on Thursday July 6th from the Georgia Capitol building.