Earlier this week, on April Fools’ Day of all days, a call from a Federal court docket in Georgia started to reverberate by means of social media. The choice to dismiss the Curling v. Raffensperger case after an eight-year-long battle waged by the Coalition for Good Governance and Marilyn Marks shocked many who adopted the case and 17-day trial intently.
I lined this case intently for The Gateway Pundit, flying as much as Atlanta, Georgia. for 2 weeks to cowl the trial in Choose Amy Totenberg’s court docket. The case to ban ballot-marking gadgets (BMDs) ought to have been a slam dunk after Dr. J. Alex Halderman hacked the machines a number of alternative ways in entrance of the choose, even going so far as hacking the machine in order that the poll appeared in each method as if it was an correct illustration of the voter’s intent. However when Dr. Halderman scanned the poll, it was tabulated with a totally totally different consequence.
Regardless of Dr. Halderman demonstrating these hacks in real-time utilizing easy gadgets like a BIC pen or a $14 “sensible card” that may be bought on Amazon, and Dr. Philip Stark of UC-Berkeley testifying that there have been a whole lot of 1000’s of poll pictures and tens of 1000’s of hash validation recordsdata (used to authenticate poll pictures have been unaltered) have been lacking, in addition to a consortium of chain of custody paperwork, making the 2020 Basic Election unverifiable, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger took to X to put up maybe the most effective April Fools’ ‘joke’ of the day:
This ruling is only one extra resounding vindication of Georgia’s elections.
From day one, we knew these accusations have been meritless.
Actual-world proof exhibits that Georgia’s paper poll voting system works.https://t.co/8KG9bVzAVR
— GA Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (@GaSecofState) April 1, 2025
“Actual-world proof exhibits that Georgia’s paper poll voting system works. April Fools!” He should have forgotten that final half.
So what emboldened the Georgia Secretary of State to make such an conceited remark regardless of the mountains of proof on the contrary?
The highly-anticipated 14-month await a ruling within the Curling v. Raffensperger case.
However Georgia’s system did not get a “clear invoice of well being” from the federal court docket. There was not a call that discovered the machines to be “protected and safe.”
No. Choose Totenberg punted, as did nearly each single choose presiding over an election case following the 2020 Presidential Election. As Sidney Powell, a sufferer of the lawfare waged in Georgia in opposition to President Trump et al in District Legal professional Fani Willis’s pipe-dream RICO case, said on X:
“The outdated ‘standing’ argument!”
The outdated “standing” argument!
— Sidney Powell Legal professional, Creator, Gladiator (@SidneyPowell1) April 1, 2025
The Determination
On this article, we’ll undergo the 33-page ruling from Choose Totenberg that culminates with “Plaintiffs don’t have standing, the Court docket lacks jurisdiction…”
In her ruling, Choose Totenberg acknowledges that, “Though the QR code is used to tabulate every particular person’s vote, voters can not overview the contents of the QR code to substantiate that it precisely displays their picks” and that the plaintiffs’ claims “concern the…curiosity in safeguarding the credibility and reliability of Georgia’s elections.”
She acknowledges that the difficulty of standing was introduced up beforehand within the case, with it upheld each in her Court docket and within the eleventh Circuit Court docket of Appeals that plaintiffs did, in actual fact, have standing. Nonetheless, Choose Totenberg invokes the Supreme Court docket having “extra clearly outlined the authorized necessities for standing,” amongst different justifications:
“First, the Supreme Court docket has extra clearly outlined the authorized necessities for standing. Second, Plaintiffs face a better evidentiary burden to determine standing at trial than they did at earlier levels of this case – for instance, by continuing to trial, Plaintiffs not profit from the favorable requirements of overview that helped them rebut Defendants’ pretrial motions on standing. Lastly, the accidents supporting Plaintiff’s standing argument have developed.”
Plaintiffs argued that they’ve standing as a result of the voting system harms Plaintiffs in two methods: “First, they argue that the voting system makes it not possible for these voters to confirm that the QR code on their printed ballots, that are used to tabulate their votes, precisely displays the poll picks they made on the voting machines.”
This declare was supported by the testimony and dwell demonstration referenced above from Dr. J. Alex Halderman with the choose acknowleding that people can not confirm their very own vote since QR codes are “not human readable.”
The second declare argues that “voters are injured by having to finish the burdensome means of revie[w]ing their poll picks twice: as soon as on the voting machine display screen and once more by verifying the restricted info on their printed poll.”
The printed poll solely exhibits the listing of the voter’s picks whereas omitting different key info “such because the names of different candidates and a full description of every race or poll query.”
After contemplating these two arguments, Choose Totenberg shockingly writes:
“After prolonged consideration of the events’ arguments and voluminous trial proof, the Court docket concludes that Plaintiffs lack standing to pursue their claims as a result of neither of those asserted accidents represent an invasion of a legally protected curiosity below governing precedent.”
First, Plaintiffs don’t declare that Georgia’s use of a QR code…prevents the person Plaintiffs…from voting, dilutes their votes, or prevents their votes from being counted. They as a substitute declare that as a result of the voting system tabulates their votes by scanning an indecipherable QR code on their printed ballots, they’re unable to confirm that the QR code that’s tabulated precisely captures the picks that they made on the voting machine.”
Second, Plaintiff’s proof of the burdens imposed by the voting system’s ballot-review course of displays that, though some voters could discover the voting course of difficult, it isn’t by itself an impediment to a voter’s casting of their poll. As a result of neither of those alleged accidents implicate established legally protected pursuits, the Court docket should discover that Plaintiffs don’t have standing. The Court docket thus lacks jurisdiction to contemplate the deserves of Plaintiffs’ claims and should dismiss the case.”
In laymen’s phrases, you do not have the authorized proper to make sure your poll is solid precisely, as long as you’ve the power to solid your vote unimpeded.
Choose Totenberg acknowledged “substantial issues” recognized by Plaintiffs, together with issues concerning the administration, upkeep, and safety of Georgia’s digital voting system whereas particularly referencing Dr. Halderman’s testimony.
The Proof Introduced On The File
In her ruling, Choose Totenberg acknowledges Dr. Halderman’s 2021 “in depth” report displaying “how the BMD system might be focused for out of doors manipulation.” She cites Dr. Halderman’s findings that “an attacker may doubtlessly alter poll QR codes to change vote picks, set up malware on BMDs, manipulate sensible playing cards, alter audit logs, and procure count-wide BMD passwords.”
Dr. Halderman testified that though “attackers can alter QR codes on printed ballots to change voters’ picks,” voters “don’t have any sensible approach to affirm that the QR codes match their intent.” His report defined that unencrypted QR codes, like these discovered on the Dominion ICX-printed ballots, might be manipulated by an attacker putting in malware on the “bizarre laser printers which are connected to BMD machines.”
He additionally wrote in his report that an assault might be facilitated by malware on the BMD itself, and that it might be programmed to “solely alter the ballots’ QR codes and never the human-readable textual content that’s reviewed by voters and used for election audits.”
On November 12, 2020, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Safety Company (CISA) Director Chris Krebs, an environmental lawyer, recklessly referred to as the 2020 Presidential Election, “Essentially the most safe in American historical past.” This supplied the Mockingbird Media with the required ammunition to “fact-check” and “debunk” official claims concerning large discrepancies, together with unprecedented and curiously synchronized stoppages of vote counting in key swing states in the course of the evening adopted by large, inexplicable vote spikes solely for Joe Biden that overtook President Trump’s lead.
That very same CISA, in early 2022, acknowledged Dr. Halderman’s findings and issued a public advisory “confirming and validating the findings concerning the BMD system’s vulnerabilities.” The acknowledged points included set up of malware and the power to forge ballot employee, voter, and technician sensible playing cards. The technician sensible card was particularly regarding as a result of it granted unfettered entry to the system with little capability to detect the intrusion.
Choose Totenberg wrote concerning the “assaults” demonstrated in her courtroom, acknowledging that “BMDs might be attacked by sticking a ballpoint pen behind the machine to reboot the BMD in protected mode, which might permit an attacker to achieve entry to election recordsdata and manipulate the machine.”
She additionally acknowledged Dr. Halderman’s demonstration of the “set up of vote-flipping malware utilizing a USB system.”
Plaintiffs additionally offered proof that the Ballot Pads, used to test in voters, is usually a vector to govern the voter playing cards assigned to voters for the reason that Ballot Pads are permitted to hook up with the web.
Lastly, Dr. Halderman testified concerning the “safety breach” that occurred in Espresso County, claiming that the election software program obtained might be “distributed to unauthorized recipients each inside the USA and overseas.” In the course of the trial, there was little point out of the affidavits submitted by witnesses in Coffee County, in addition to the findings of Jeff Lenberg, a former nuclear programs penetration tester with high-level clearances for a authorities contractor.
The Ask
Given the proof and vulnerabilities offered, Plaintiffs have been in search of to enjoin Defendants from utilizing the BMD system because the “customary methodology for in-person voting.” The Dominion ICX BMD is often restricted to make use of by people with disabilities. Georgia is the one state within the U.S. that rolled this method out uniformly to each county.
Moreover, they have been in search of to:
- “order Defendants to develop a real, strong, and actionable backup plan to deploy hand-marked paper ballots for statewide elections if the BMD system turns into not possible or impracticable to make use of
- enjoin Defendants from stopping counties from selecting to make use of hand-marked paper ballots
- full the mitigation measures that CISA suggested in June 2022
- direct county superintendents to ban using tools that has damaged or lacking safety seals
- direct county superintendents to make sure that every BMD undergoes acceptable testing to make sure that it would accurately file and tabulate each vote solid
The Georgia Basic Meeting handed Senate Invoice 189 following the trial. This invoice ensures that counties can use hand-marked paper ballots for elections with fewer than 5,000 registered voters. It additionally dictates that the readable printout is the “official vote for functions of vote tabulation” and auditing. Nonetheless, the tabulator itself nonetheless reads the QR code when tabulating votes.
SB 189 additionally eliminates the QR code as of July 2026 and “creates a course of for offering scanned poll pictures in response to open information requests” as of January 2025.
As for the mitigation that CISA suggested, SOS Raffensperger punted on these suggestions, claiming that it might be too expensive and time-consuming to replace the programs previous to the 2024 Presidential Election. That was in June 2023, a full 17 months earlier than the 2024 election.
Disallowing using machines with damaged or lacking seals must be manifestly apparent.
And most significantly, SB189 created “a pilot program to audit poll pictures that confirm solely the human-readable portion of the poll.”
The latter is the topic of a collection The Gateway Pundit is at present publishing concerning the auditor chosen for this process, Enhanced Voting. In Part 1 of that collection, it was revealed that the corporate tasked with the auditing is based and led by Aaron Wilson, the previous Senior Director of Election Safety for the Heart for Web Safety (CIS). In the course of the 2020 election season, Wilson collaborated with the Division of Homeland Safety, the FBI, and CISA to create conduits for election officers and different authorities entities to report “mis-, dis-, and mal-information” to social media firms for censoring.
Standing
Choose Totenberg wrote that, “Like many election circumstances,” this turns to the federal courts’ “restricted jurisdiction.”
“Earlier than contemplating the deserves of the Plaintiffs’ claims, the Court docket is required to handle the edge query of whether or not Plaintiffs have standing to sue below Article III of the Structure.”
It took eight years, a 17-day trial, 14 months of deliberation, and maybe hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in authorized charges and expenditures to find out this. Completely unacceptable.
She additionally said that Plaintiffs “fail to show Georgia’s use of the BMD…has triggered or is prone to trigger them to undergo a legally cognizable damage” and due to this fact “the Court docket lacks jurisdiction to contemplate the deserves of their claims.”
“Has triggered or is prone to trigger…legally cognizable damage” stands proud right here. Should you’ve learn my work on Georgia’s elections, you might concentrate on the VoterGA.org lawsuit spearheaded by Garland Favorito that challenged Fulton County to permit them to look at the bodily paper ballots from the 2020 election. After this case was dismissed by Choose Brian Amero in Henry County, GA, the GA Supreme Court docket dominated that voters do have standing to carry election challenges in Sons of Accomplice Veterans v Henry County. That was in December 2022. Since being remanded again all the way down to the inferior courts, Favorito’s case has been ready over 750 days for task.
However one other investigation launched by Phillip Davis, a software program engineer who has devoted the final 4 years to learning Georgia’s elections, discovered that the precise challenge of the human-readable textual content not matching the official tabulated consequence did, in actual fact, happen in Georgia in 2020 and 2022. If having your vote counted counter to your choice is not “legally cognizable damage,” then our elections are nothing greater than Kabuki theater.
In not less than 3 counties in Georgia (he solely acquired to slightly greater than 70 counties out of 159) the Forged Vote Data (CVR) don’t match the corresponding poll pictures.
In different phrases, a transparent vote for Donald Trump on the bodily poll was recorded as a vote for Joe Biden on the… pic.twitter.com/8ZoyBVYsk0
— CannCon (@CannConActual) March 15, 2025
The choose later wrote:
Plaintiffs declare that this method injures the person Plaintiffs and CGG members by (1) stopping them from verifying that information within the QR code on their printed poll, which is scanned for tabulation, precisely displays their vote; and (2) requiring them to undertake the burdensome means of reviewing their picks on the BMD display screen and once more within the small, incomplete human-readable textual content on their printed poll.
Upon prolonged consideration of the trial proof, the Court docket finds that Plaintiffs lack standing to pursue their claims as a result of neither of those alleged accidents represent an “invasion of a legally protected curiosity.” Though Plaintiffs have capably, thoughtfully, and diligently pursued their opposition to Georgia’s use of the BMD system, the Court docket can not think about the deserves of their claims with out such a legally cognizable damage.
The surprising logic right here is that there isn’t a “judicially enforceable curiosity” within the voter’s capability to confirm their vote is correctly counted: “Plaintiffs as a substitute base this principle of hurt on the precept that proper to vote consists of ‘the fitting to have one’s vote counted.'”
As talked about beforehand, “Plaintiffs don’t declare that Georgia’s use of a QR code for tabulation…prevents the…Plaintiffs…from voting, dilutes their vote, or will stop their vote from being precisely counted. Relatively, Plaintiff’s extra modest declare is that they’re unable to confirm the info within the QR codes on their printed ballots.” In different phrases, your proper to solid a poll is upheld, nonetheless, there isn’t a established regulation that you’ve got the fitting to know how your poll is counted, later stating that “this damage is in contrast to any that the Supreme Court docket or Eleventh Circuit have acknowledged as a legally cognizable hurt to voting or related rights” so the Court docket is “due to this fact unable to conclude that the accidents recognized by Plaintiffs at trial fall inside ‘the zone of pursuits to be protected’ by the First or Fourteenth Amendments.”
In a press release from the Coalition for Good Governance, Government Director Marilyn Marks stated:
“This determination successfully treats the fitting to vote as merely the fitting to solid a poll, not the fitting to know what vote is being solid and counted. That can’t be the regulation. A system the place a voter has no approach to know whether or not their poll displays their true picks is basically incompatible with the constitutional proper to vote.
“The Court docket basically held that voters don’t have any proper to know whether or not the state is definitely recording vote as they marked on their digital poll, so long as they’re allowed to press buttons on a touchscreen. This renders the fitting to vote an phantasm.”
Moreover the eight-year-long dragging on of this case, the 17-day trial, and the 14-month deliberation that drained substantial monetary sources, it now units a harmful precedent that voters solely have the fitting to solid a vote and no proper to know that their vote was solid precisely. The muse of our Constitutional Republic will likely be considerably eroded by this precedent shifting ahead.
