Brad Raffensperger’s Election Contradictions
Today the January 6th Committee will hear much anticipated testimony from Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. But there is deep irony in his appearance as the Committee exposes the roles of Trump allies in attempting to overturn the 2020 election. Like the well-known incidents of Trump election deniers illegally accessing voting software in Colorado and Michigan, a similar breach allegedly occurred in Georgia, but Raffensperger will not talk about that today. He and deputy Gabe Sterling appear to be engaged in cover-up efforts to avoid having the damning facts fully surface in this mid-term election year.
The Washington Post and The Daily Beast have recently reported that Trump-aligned vigilante groups claimed that they accessed and copied Georgia’s election software in Coffee County, Georgia, similar to the incidents in Michigan and Colorado. If Coffee County rings a bell, it’s because voting system issues in Coffee County were referenced in the infamous proposed Executive Orders Trump’s team drafted to justify seizing voting machines. The alleged breach occurred January 7, a day after the attempted insurrection, facilitated by local election officials and GOP officials who showed their willingness to go to great lengths at their own legal peril to cast doubt on the certified results. But what hasn’t yet been reported is Raffensperger’s effort to avoid any meaningful investigation that would expose the alarming vulnerabilities of Georgia’s electronic voting system. Disclosure and a real investigation would also expose the Trump-supporting perpetrators, who may have the Georgia MAGA crowd’s support for their alleged crime.
Raffensperger has emerged as an unexpected hero to some after resisting Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. But to many of us in Georgia who are fighting to protect the security and legitimacy of Georgia’s elections, that praise is undeserved, and the narrative that Raffensperger is a fierce defender of democracy rings hollow. Not only did Raffensperger author several undemocratic measures in Georgia’s election law SB 202, he has failed to address legitimate security issues with Georgia’s voting system.
Raffensperger will testify about Trump’s campaign to press Georgia’s top election official to “find” 11,780 votes to declare Trump the winner, regardless of the actual vote count. While Raffensperger has been commended for “doing the right thing” by refusing to break the law to rig an election, that is frankly an embarrassingly low bar. While he at least avoiding doing the “wrong thing” then, he is doing the “wrong thing” now, by failing to acknowledge and mitigate the compromise of the seriously vulnerable voting system he chose and oversees although the voting system software in Coffee County, Georgia was illegally accessed.
I recorded one of the organizers who called me and boldly claimed that the team, which involved some of the same actors who imaged the infamous Antrim, Michigan server, had copied the contents of every server, voting machine, scanner, and electronic pollbook, making this insider heist the largest yet reported of insider attempts to pirate away election software. Indeed later, some of the same team that allegedly improperly accessed and copied voting systems in Michigan and Colorado, (where state and federal law enforcement are investigating possible crimes) bragged they obtained Georgia forensic images of the system.
As plaintiffs in the five year old lawsuit Curling v. Raffensperger, which seeks to replace the touchscreen voting device in Georgia’s election system with hand marked paper ballots, we have sought answers about this incident for months, but have been met with persistent stonewalling, obfuscation, and denials. We know that the server that hosted the voting system software in Coffee County was seized by the Secretary of State’s office in June 2021 for reasons that are undocumented and inadequately unexplained by Raffensperger’s office. All Coffee County emails and records concerning the server and its seizure have been inexplicably destroyed, and Raffensperger’s staff has been unable to produce even minimal documentation of the equipment seizure or reasons for it. In multiple depositions, representatives from the Secretary of State’s office, including deputy Gabriel Sterling, could not recall any findings about the Coffee County server investigation, the alleged breach, or any actions taken in response by the Secretary’s office. An email from the Secretary of State’s chief investigator shows the staff was ordered to open an investigation in May 2021, but there is no evidence that an investigation was conducted, not even a case number — just a suddenly removed server. And though Raffensperger told a federal court that his investigation was opened this year in late February, to date, Coffee County officials say they have received no word of an investigation, even though their election server was seized a year ago by the Secretary’s staff. Raffensperger’s Coffee County server files appear to be empty, as he cannot produce the most basic documents requested in the litigation.
Ironically, the January 6th Committee is poised to hear again how Raffensperger “stood up to Trump,” as he avoided caving to demands to manipulate the vote count. But unbeknownst to most, Raffensperger himself appears to be concealing a dangerous compromise of Georgia’s voting system by Trump allies, putting 2022 midterms at great risk of compromise by those who would subvert democratic elections. Paradoxically, the very people who plotted to overturn the election and those they influenced, the subject of these hearings, include vigilantes who appear to have been behind the intrusion into Georgia’s voting system being covered up by Raffensperger and Sterling.
There is great danger to our nation if the public prefers a comforting narrative of Raffensperger’s “heroic stance” to replace actual truth of his irresponsible mismanagement of Georgia’s election systems and the reckless invitation to election manipulation it invites. It is a fast and slippery slope to partisan election subversion if our society does not demand full election transparency and verifiability. It is indeed the only thing that can earn the confidence of voters. Voters will lose hope when the truth eventually emerges that Raffensperger, being put on a pedestal as a role model and hero, has feet of clay.
Marilyn Marks is the Executive Director of Coalition for Good Governance, a non-partisan, non-profit organization litigating two federal lawsuits against Brad Raffensperger and other Georgia officials, alleging U.S. Constitutional voting rights violations. Contact: Marilyn@USCGG.org
