ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia
allowed its election system to grow “way too old and archaic” and now
has a deep hole to dig out of to ensure that the constitutional right to
vote is protected, U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg said Friday.
Now
Totenberg is in the difficult position of having to decide whether the
state, which plans to implement a new voting system statewide next year,
must immediately abandon its outdated voting machines in favor of an
interim solution for special and municipal elections to be held this
fall.
Election integrity advocates and individual voters sued
Georgia in 2017 alleging that the touchscreen voting machines the state
has used since 2002 are unsecure and vulnerable to hacking. They’ve
asked Totenberg to order the state to immediately switch to hand-marked
paper ballots.
But
lawyers for Fulton County, the state’s most populous county that
includes most of Atlanta, and for state election officials argued that
the state is in the process of implementing a new system, and it would
be too costly, burdensome and chaotic to use an interim system for
elections this fall and then switch to the new permanent system next
year.
A law passed this year and signed by Gov. Brian Kemp
provides specifications for a new system in which voters make their
selections on electronic machines that print out a paper record that is
read and tallied by scanners. State officials have said it will be in
place for the 2020 presidential election.
Lawyers for the
plaintiffs argued Friday that the current system is so unsecure and
vulnerable to manipulation that it cannot be relied upon, jeopardizing
voters’ constitutional rights.
“We can’t sacrifice people’s right
to vote just because Georgia has left this system in place for 20 years
and it’s so far behind,” said lawyer Bruce Brown, who represents the
Coalition for Good Governance and a group of voters.
Addressing
concerns about an interim system being burdensome to implement,
plaintiffs’ lawyers countered that the state put itself in this
situation by neglecting the system for so long and ignoring warnings.
Lawyer David Cross, who represents another group of voters, urged the
judge to force the state to take responsibility.
“You are the last resort,” he said.
Georgia’s
voting system drew national scrutiny during the closely watched contest
for governor last November in which Kemp, a Republican who was the
state’s top election official at the time, narrowly defeated Democrat
Stacey Abrams.
The
plaintiffs had asked Totenberg in August to force Georgia to use
hand-marked paper ballots for that election. While Totenberg expressed
grave concerns about vulnerabilities in the voting system and scolded
state officials for being slow to respond to evidence of those problems,
she said a switch to paper ballots so close to the midterm election
would be too chaotic. She warned state officials that further delay
would be unacceptable.
But she seemed conflicted Friday at the conclusion of a two-day hearing.
“These
are very difficult issues,” she said. “I’m going to wrestle with them
the best that I can, but these are not simple issues.”
She
recognized that the state had taken concrete steps since her warning
last year, with lawmakers providing specifications for a new system,
appropriating funds and beginning the procurement process. But she also
said she wished the state had not let the situation become so dire and
wondered what would happen if the state can’t meet its aggressive
schedule for implementing the new system.
The request for
proposals specifies that vendors must be able to distribute all voting
machine equipment before March 31, which is a week after the state’s
presidential primary election is set to be held on March 24. Bryan
Tyson, a lawyer representing state election officials, told the judge
the state plans to announce the new system it’s selected in “a matter of
days.”
Alex Halderman, a University of Michigan computer science
and engineering professor, testified Friday that the state election
system’s vulnerabilities and that the safest, most secure system would
be hand-marked paper ballots with optical scanners at each precinct.
Four
county election officials, three of whom will oversee elections this
fall, testified that it would be difficult to switch to hand-marked
paper ballots in time for those elections. They cited difficulties
getting enough new equipment, as well as challenges training poll
workers and educating voters. They also said they’d have trouble paying
for the switch unless the state helps.
The two groups of
plaintiffs agree that the whole system is flawed and has to go. They
also believe the ballot-marking devices the state plans to implement
have many of the same problems, and they plan to challenge those once
the state announces which vendor has won the contract. But they disagree
about what the interim solution should be.
The plaintiffs
represented by Brown are asking the state to use hand-marked paper
ballots along with its existing election management system and to use
the ballot scanners it currently uses for paper absentee and provisional
ballots for all ballots.
The plaintiffs represented by Cross want
the state to implement its new election management system in time for
the fall elections and to use ballot scanners along with paper ballots.
Totenberg did not say when she would rule.
