Judge Throws Out Right-Wing Challenge to Georgia Voting Machines 

Voting machines fill the floor for early voting at State Farm Arena, Oct. 12, 2020, in Atlanta. (Brynn Anderson/AP)

A judge rejected Republican attempts to undermine confidence in Georgia voting machines.

The order follows a Republican lawsuit that Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) calls a “last-minute effort to push false claims about Georgia’s voting system and cast doubt on the upcoming presidential election.”

The lawsuit was filed by the DeKalb County Republican Party (DeKalb GOP) against Raffensperger on Aug. 29 challenging the state’s use of Dominion Voting Systems. They alleged that Dominion’s encryption keys are not properly secured, in violation of the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission’s (EAC) voting system certification requirements and state law. 

DeKalb GOP asked the court to order the secretary of state to bring Georgia’s voting systems into compliance with EAC requirements and state law. The law requires voting machines to be compliant with EAC certification requirements at the time of purchase, which Raffensperger claims it was. The machines were fully certified when the state entered into a contract with Dominion in 2019. 

In their complaint, DeKalb GOP pointed to the publication of encryption keys of four Georgia counties during an open records request as evidence that the voting system was compromised. They claimed that “Georgia’s election systems have been placed in an illegal and insecure state since at least 2020” and “may have already been compromised by malicious actors.” 

Raffensperger’s attorney flatly denied the allegations at trial, calling the plaintiffs’ claims “fear mongering.” The encryption keys that were mistakenly made public had been changed and, in fact, all encryption keys are changed every election. 

Beyond the machines’ software, there are also layers of physical security that would make it nearly impossible for the machines to be breached. Raffensperger’s attorney told the judge the situations DeKalb GOP were suggesting would require someone to “engage in a kind of Mission Impossible-level operation that would require a whole lot of Tom Cruises to pull it off.”

“There is not much credibility in the claim,” she said.

In his ruling, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee noted that the voting machines are correctly certified and that the security risks the plaintiffs raised “are – at this point – purely hypothetical.” Additionally, the remedies they asked for would not have addressed the hypothetical risks. 

Trump and his allies have made countless attacks against Dominion voting machines since 2020 to undermine public confidence in election results. In a legal brief filed Wednesday, Special Counsel Jack Smith detailed their concerted effort to overturn the 2020 election by, in part, alleging voting machines had changed peoples’ votes.

Read the order here.

Learn more about the case here.