COALITION FOR GOOD GOVERNANCE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Marilyn Marks
Marilyn@USCGG.org
704 552-1618

Wednesday, July 5, 2017

PRESS CONFERENCE Thursday, July 6, 10:30 a.m. ET (In-person and Facebook Live)

GEORGIA VOTERS FILE LAWSUIT TO CHALLENGE GEORGIAS GA-6

ELECTION AND VOTING SYSTEM
Voters seek to ban touchscreen voting system

Atlanta (July 5, 2017)Coalition for Good Governance and six Georgia voters filed a
lawsuit July 3, alleging that numerous failures of the voting system caused an
indeterminable outcome in the June 20 Special Election for Georgias 6th Congressional
District. The lawsuit (Curling v. Kemp et al.) seeks to set aside the results of the Special
Election because voting system failures created considerable doubt in the reported
results. The lawsuit names Secretary of State Brian Kemp, the State Election Board, all
county election officials conducting the Special Election, Kennesaw State Universitys
Center for Election Systems, and its director, Merle King, as defendants. The plaintiffs
have requested a jury trial.

The plaintiffs allege that the security of Georgias touchscreen voting system was
severely compromised, violated Georgias election code, and cannot be legally used to
conduct elections. As a result, an accurate election result could not be determined for
the June 20 election. Georgias election code permits voters to initiate a legal challenge
(an election contest) when irregularities or officials misconduct cast doubt on the
reported election outcome.

Donna Curling, the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit, explained, Georgia voters have been
concerned for years about the major vulnerabilities in the un-auditable system and the
very real risk of pervasive failure in an election that cannot be rectified, as we have just
experienced. She adds, Georgians must demand that officials honor their
constitutional rights to fair and legally conducted elections. This lawsuit is our next
major step in that process.

Marilyn Marks, Executive Director of the organizing plaintiff Coalition for Good
Governance, added, As the facts of the case are presented, voters will be appalled at the
reckless actions of election officials. Secretary Kemp and all the named election officials
received repeated grave warnings from voting systems experts concerning the likely
compromise of the system and the compelling need to use paper ballots. Officials
ignored the compelling evidence of the problems and concealed them from the public as
they made false assurances about the security of the system.

Computer scientists warned Secretary Kemp that security failures that created extensive
internet exposure of the system components must be presumed to have compromised
the system, rendering it unsafe for use in the Special Election. The admonitions were
ignored, as officials deployed a voting system that did not meet Georgias election law
requirements nor basic computer security standards.

Richard DeMillo, Georgia Tech computer science professor and a former Dean, Director
of the Information Security Center, and Hewlett Packard CTO, who has extensive
technical knowledge of Georgias voting system, stated, I worry that what we have here
in Georgia is the Titanic Effect. We have a Secretary of State who thinks Russian election
hacking is fake news and is dismissive of system vulnerabilities. Georgia officials are
convinced the states election system cannot be breached. Shades of the unsinkable
ship. They have neglected to give us life boats. In this case, life boats would come in the
form of a fail-safe system designed so that in case of a catastrophe Georgia voters can
easily verify that reported vote totals match voter intent. It is the sort of common-sense
approach that first-year engineering students learn. Other states have that capability.
Inexplicably, Georgia does not.

Curling, DeMillo, and 12 other Georgia voters, concerned about the voting systems
vulnerability and unreliable design, urgently requested Secretary Kemp and the State
Election Board on May 10 and again on May 17, May 19, and June 2 to immediately re-
examine the voting system and sideline it for the Special Election because of known
serious security concerns. Their demands and the warnings of national experts were
ignored.

On June 14, the extensive nature of Georgias voting system vulnerability became
national news when Politico reported the fact that for months the entire system had
been open on the internet for access by anyone. Cybersecurity researchers found open
access to system information including passwords, private voter registration
information, ballot programming software, and evidence that Georgia's Center for
Election Systems at Kennesaw State was transmitting key programming information to
election officials over the internet. Georgia officials failed to inform the public of the
system failures and conducted the election by using the unsafe system.

Plaintiffs allege, as computer scientists warned before the Special Election, the
compromised system was incapable of producing reliable and certifiable results, stating
that the system cannot be presumed to have been safe or legal for accepting votes. The
Georgia voters bringing this lawsuit view this litigation as an important step in requiring
that the unverifiable touchscreen system be decommissioned as several other states
have done.

In its study of voting technology, NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology)
found no alternative that does not have as a likely consequence either an effective
requirement for paper records or the possibility of undetectable errors in the recording
of votes. If undetectable errors can be introduced at any point in the process, then the
argument for the correctness of the process as a whole inevitably has a missing link.
Marks states that the correctness of the June 20 election indeed has that missing link
and therefore casts the results in substantial doubt.

The suit seeks to overturn the reported results of the Special Election and to order a new
election, as well as requiring Secretary Kemp to promptly re-examine the system and
prohibit its use in the upcoming November municipal elections.

In light of these and other threats to the legitimacy of elections in Georgia, voters and
legislators have been asked to trust the word of officials that our votes are counted as
cast. That is unacceptable for democratic voting systems. They must be transparent and
verifiable, said Donna Price, a plaintiff and a director of the citizens activist
organization Georgians for Verified Voting.

The plaintiffs, a diverse group of Georgia voters, also include Ricardo Davis, Laura
Digges, William Digges III, and Jeffrey Schoenberg

A press conference will be held at 10:30 a.m. ET at the Georgia Tech Hotel and
Conference Center, 800 Spring Street, Atlanta. The press conference will be live-
streamed on Facebook Live from the Coalition for Good Governances Facebook page.

The Coalition for Good Governance is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization (501(c)3)

focused on fair and transparent elections.

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