Earlier this week, on April Fools’ Day of all days, a call from a Federal courtroom in Georgia started to reverberate via 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 courtroom. 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 other ways in entrance of the choose, even going so far as hacking the machine in order that the poll appeared in each approach as if it was an correct illustration of the voter’s intent. However when Dr. Halderman scanned the poll, it was tabulated with a very totally different consequence.
Regardless of Dr. Halderman demonstrating these hacks in real-time utilizing easy objects like a BIC pen or a $14 “good card” that may be bought on Amazon, and Dr. Philip Stark of UC-Berkeley testifying that there have been a whole bunch of hundreds of poll photographs and tens of hundreds of hash validation information (used to authenticate poll photographs had been unaltered) had been lacking, in addition to a consortium of chain of custody paperwork, making the 2020 Normal Election unverifiable, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger took to X to submit maybe the very best 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 had been meritless.
Actual-world proof reveals 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 reveals 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 smug remark regardless of the mountains of proof on the contrary?
The highly-anticipated 14-month anticipate a ruling within the Curling v. Raffensperger case.
However Georgia’s system did not get a “clear invoice of well being” from the federal courtroom. There was not a call that discovered the machines to be “protected and safe.”
No. Choose Totenberg punted, as did virtually each single choose presiding over an election case following the 2020 Presidential Election. As Sidney Powell, a sufferer of the lawfare waged in Georgia towards President Trump et al in District Lawyer Fani Willis’s pipe-dream RICO case, acknowledged on X:
“The outdated ‘standing’ argument!”
The outdated “standing” argument!
— Sidney Powell Lawyer, Writer, Gladiator (@SidneyPowell1) April 1, 2025
The Choice
On this article, we are going to undergo the 33-page ruling from Choose Totenberg that culminates with “Plaintiffs would not have standing, the Courtroom lacks jurisdiction…”
In her ruling, Choose Totenberg acknowledges that, “Though the QR code is used to tabulate every individual’s vote, voters can’t assessment the contents of the QR code to verify 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 Courtroom and within the eleventh Circuit Courtroom of Appeals that plaintiffs did, in truth, have standing. Nonetheless, Choose Totenberg invokes the Supreme Courtroom having “extra clearly outlined the authorized necessities for standing,” amongst different justifications:
“First, the Supreme Courtroom has extra clearly outlined the authorized necessities for standing. Second, Plaintiffs face the next evidentiary burden to determine standing at trial than they did at earlier phases of this case – for instance, by continuing to trial, Plaintiffs not profit from the favorable requirements of assessment that helped them rebut Defendants’ pretrial motions on standing. Lastly, the accidents supporting Plaintiff’s standing argument have advanced.”
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 unattainable 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’t 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 technique of revie[w]ing their poll picks twice: as soon as on the voting machine display and once more by verifying the restricted info on their printed poll.”
The printed poll solely reveals 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 Courtroom 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 an alternative 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 Courtroom should discover that Plaintiffs would not have standing. The Courtroom thus lacks jurisdiction to think about 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 forged precisely, as long as you may have the power to forged your vote unimpeded.
Choose Totenberg acknowledged “substantial issues” recognized by Plaintiffs, together with issues in regards to the administration, upkeep, and safety of Georgia’s digital voting system whereas particularly referencing Dr. Halderman’s testimony.
The Proof Offered On The Report
In her ruling, Choose Totenberg acknowledges Dr. Halderman’s 2021 “intensive” report displaying “how the BMD system may very well be focused for out of doors manipulation.” She cites Dr. Halderman’s findings that “an attacker may doubtlessly alter poll QR codes to switch vote picks, set up malware on BMDs, manipulate good 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 switch voters’ picks,” voters “haven’t any sensible method 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, may very well 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 could be facilitated by malware on the BMD itself, and that it may very well 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 offered the Mockingbird Media with the mandatory ammunition to “fact-check” and “debunk” legit claims relating to huge discrepancies, together with unprecedented and curiously synchronized stoppages of vote counting in key swing states in the midst of the night time adopted by huge, inexplicable vote spikes completely 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 relating to the BMD system’s vulnerabilities.” The acknowledged points included set up of malware and the power to forge ballot employee, voter, and technician good playing cards. The technician good card was particularly regarding as a result of it granted unfettered entry to the system with little skill to detect the intrusion.
Choose Totenberg wrote in regards to the “assaults” demonstrated in her courtroom, acknowledging that “BMDs could be attacked by sticking a ballpoint pen behind the machine to reboot the BMD in protected mode, which might permit an attacker to realize entry to election information 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 introduced proof that the Ballot Pads, used to verify in voters, could be a vector to control the voter playing cards assigned to voters for the reason that Ballot Pads are permitted to connect with the web.
Lastly, Dr. Halderman testified relating to the “safety breach” that occurred in Espresso County, claiming that the election software program obtained may very well be “distributed to unauthorized recipients each inside the US 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 introduced, Plaintiffs had been in search of to enjoin Defendants from utilizing the BMD system because the “commonplace methodology for in-person voting.” The Dominion ICX BMD is usually restricted to make use of by people with disabilities. Georgia is the one state within the U.S. that rolled this technique out uniformly to each county.
Moreover, they had been in search of to:
- “order Defendants to develop a real, sturdy, and actionable backup plan to deploy hand-marked paper ballots for statewide elections if the BMD system turns into unattainable 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 document and tabulate each vote forged
The Georgia Normal 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 photographs 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 needs to be manifestly apparent.
And most significantly, SB189 created “a pilot program to audit poll photographs that confirm solely the human-readable portion of the poll.”
The latter is the topic of a sequence The Gateway Pundit is at present publishing relating to the auditor chosen for this process, Enhanced Voting. In Part 1 of that sequence, 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 corporations 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 Courtroom is required to deal with 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 acknowledged that Plaintiffs “fail to show Georgia’s use of the BMD…has induced or is more likely to trigger them to endure a legally cognizable harm” and due to this fact “the Courtroom lacks jurisdiction to think about the deserves of their claims.”
“Has induced or is more likely to trigger…legally cognizable harm” stands out right here. Should you’ve learn my work on Georgia’s elections, it’s possible you’ll 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 Courtroom 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 project.
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 subject of the human-readable textual content not matching the official tabulated consequence did, in truth, happen in Georgia in 2020 and 2022. If having your vote counted counter to your choice is not “legally cognizable harm,” then our elections are nothing greater than Kabuki theater.
In at the least 3 counties in Georgia (he solely obtained to a little bit greater than 70 counties out of 159) the Forged Vote Data (CVR) don’t match the corresponding poll photographs.
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 technique 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 technique of reviewing their picks on the BMD display and once more within the small, incomplete human-readable textual content on their printed poll.
Upon prolonged consideration of the trial proof, the Courtroom 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 Courtroom can’t contemplate the deserves of their claims with out such a legally cognizable harm.
The surprising logic right here is that there is no such thing as a “judicially enforceable curiosity” within the voter’s skill to confirm their vote is correctly counted: “Plaintiffs as an alternative base this concept of hurt on the precept that proper to vote consists of ‘the best 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. Quite, Plaintiff’s extra modest declare is that they’re unable to confirm the information within the QR codes on their printed ballots.” In different phrases, your proper to forged a poll is upheld, nevertheless, there is no such thing as a established legislation that you’ve got the best to know how your poll is counted, later stating that “this harm is not like any that the Supreme Courtroom or Eleventh Circuit have acknowledged as a legally cognizable hurt to voting or related rights” so the Courtroom 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, Govt Director Marilyn Marks mentioned:
“This choice successfully treats the best to vote as merely the best to forged a poll, not the best to know what vote is being forged and counted. That can’t be the legislation. A system the place a voter has no method to know whether or not their poll displays their true picks is basically incompatible with the constitutional proper to vote.
“The Courtroom basically held that voters haven’t 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 best 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 best to forged a vote and no proper to know that their vote was forged precisely. The inspiration of our Constitutional Republic will likely be considerably eroded by this precedent transferring ahead.
