Fayette Elections Board refuses to answer questions — no surprise there

I sent 14 interview questions to the three Fayette County election board members. They were told that their responses would be published verbatim. All refused to respond to the questions leading up to the pivotal 2024 election.

Here’s my email to them:

“I do an interview series and a weekly column for the online edition of The Citizen (https://thecitizen.com/author/steve-brown/).

“I always publish the replies verbatim in the interviews. Having your perspective on the local election process would be an honor.

“There is no word limit on answering the questions; the only limit is the readers’ ability to stay engaged. If possible, we would like to publish your responses on Friday, October 4.

“Many thanks.

Board member Sharlene Alexander emailed back, saying, “It is my understanding that our Board of Elections Chair, Gary Rower, is the spokesperson for all matters concerning our Board and Elections office; he also directs the Elections Office operations with our Director, so your interview should be with him.”

Alexander is new to the board, as of February 2024, and might not know about Rower’s objectionable past behavior while serving on the board (see: https://thecitizen.com/2022/10/31/elections-board-member-blows-off-report-of-123-missing-peachtree-city-voters-attacks-messenger/).

Rower’s vicious attack on a poll worker who pointed out some of the actual shortcomings of the local board of elections does not give Fayette voters a lot of trust in the system.

In last week’s column, part one, revealing the voting machine and process conundrum, I showed what a twisted ethical struggle it was selecting Georgia’s digital voting machines (see https://thecitizen.com/2024/09/30/opinion-your-vote-secure-or-corrupted-part-1/).

The legislature set parameters for transparent and accountable voting, and they were not followed. Special interests got involved, money followed influence, citizen groups sued, and tech experts said we were doing it all wrong.

Dirty hands in both political parties. All of that happened long before the 2020 election.

Vested parties are creating fake accounts, and anonymous commenters are trying to lambast anyone taking a serious look at elections in Georgia. Some interests do not want a secure voting system.

These days, many of our elections at every level are decided by a few percentage points, so every vote counts. Can we count on the veracity of every vote tallied?

Believe everyone but the secretary of state’s office?

In the Georgia legislature, the “Republican Party is recommending that the state get rid of the new [Dominion] voting machines and replace them with hand-marked paper ballots,” according to 11 Alive reporter Doug Richards (“In about-face, Georgia GOP now calls for end of new voting machines, move to paper ballots,” February 9, 2021, 11 Alive News).

In my last column, I cited national cybersecurity experts like Harri Hursti’s contention that hand-marked paper ballots, optically scanned, are the most secure and least expensive form of voting.

Under oath in federal court, Alex “Halderman, a University of Michigan computer scientist, changed results of a hypothetical referendum on Sunday alcohol sales. He flipped the winner in a theoretical election between President George Washington and Benedict Arnold, the Revolutionary War general who defected to the British. He rigged the machine to print out as many ballots as he wanted,” (“Expert shows how to tamper with Georgia voting machine in security trial,” January 22, 2024, AJC)

Astonishingly, “all he [Halderman] needed was a pen to reach a button inside the touchscreen, a fake $10 voter card he had programmed, or a $100 USB device that he plugged into a cord connected to a printer, rewriting the touchscreen’s code.”

But what about the Democrat legislators in Georgia? “Republicans insisted that the state buy new computerized voting machines as Democrats called instead for the use of hand-marked paper ballots,” reports Doug Richards in 2021.

U.S. District Court Judge Amy Totenberg criticized Georgia’s electronic voting systems and questioned whether they complied with state law.

So, everyone agrees that hand-marked ballots with an optical scanner are the best method, right? Everyone except Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office.

Raffensperger’s office did not plead with the legislature to select the most secure and least expensive voting form. The one place, the team in charge of voting statewide, you would expect to promote the best voting solution, we got silence.

Gabriel Sterling, the secretary of state office’s chief operating officer, was often pushed into the spotlight in front of the cameras. It was tough to watch those press conferences in 2020 and beyond.

Unfortunately, Sterling got into a trash-talking battle with then-President Trump over the airwaves. Sterling also began to employ the tactic of calling critics crazy, using terms like “insanity,” “fever dream,” and “made-up internet cabal,” (“Georgia election official outlines how state chose Dominion Voting Systems, November 30, 2020, 11 Alive News).

In 2020, Sterling referred to hand-marked ballots as “the Luddite version” of voting. However, in the same press conference, he admitted that computer voting had “vulnerabilities.”

Actions speak louder than words

In 2018, then-Secretary of State Brian Kemp formed a commission to select a new voting system. The commission would ignore its sole cybersecurity expert, Georgia Tech computer science professor Wenke Lee, who counseled against implementing a new touchscreen system and advised using hand-marked paper ballots. Why do you think they ignored the only knowledgeable commission member?

With all that crowing of their remarkable achievements, you would think that Sterling, Raffensperger, and Krebs would be front and center in the national media demanding that Fulton County hand over the 2020 ballots for review as required by law.

The non-profit voter advocate, VoterGA, would like to get their hands on those ballots, and they claimed in court that they provided new evidence from public records showing that “Fulton County’s hand count audit of the November 3, 2020 election was riddled with massive errors and provable fraud.”

Fulton County is attempting to get the court to allow them to destroy the 2020 ballots. Where is the condemnation from the “most secure in history” crowd?

As I documented in last week’s column, it has been reported that Raffensperger and Sterling have known about software vulnerabilities in the state’s voting machines for years and kept them secret. They refused to initiate the software fixes before the 2024 election.

Raffensperger has criticized the Georgia Elections Board for adopting new election rules that limit his power to call all the shots to decide whether or not elections should be scrutinized. He also disapproves of a new rule requiring that all ballots be counted by hand to match machine counts.

If local officials believe there have been errors or fraud, they should be allowed to investigate what happened in their jurisdiction. Likewise, a simple accountability check is making sure the number of printed ballots matches the same number as the machine ballot count being used for official results. However, this would indicate error or fraud, preventing Raffensperger from claiming the best, most secure election in the state’s history.

Incapable and incompetent?

The plaintiff, Coalition for Good Governance, in the lawsuit against the state concerning the use of computerized voting machines, maintains, “They [State of Georgia] have not identified one person in the Secretary [of State]’s office with any cybersecurity training, any computer science background, who is involved in any decision on how this system gets used, [or] whether it is secure,” (“‘Nightmarish’ or simple switch? After voting machine trial, a federal judge’s decision may lead to Georgians using paper ballots,” Atlanta Civic Circle, February 8, 2024).

At one point in the trial, Judge Totenberg disparages the secretary of state’s office, saying, “I don’t know who any longer is responsible for cybersecurity within the system … based on the testimony presented here.” Experts agree.

“The state either doesn’t understand, or can’t control, the technology,” said Richard DeMillo, who founded Georgia Tech’s cybersecurity program.

“All of these things worry me — just how easy these machines would be to tamper with. It’s so far from a secure system,” University of Michigan computer scientist Alex Halderman testified in federal court in January 2024. “There are all kinds of politically motivated actors that would be eager to affect results.”

About those politically motivated actors

Beyond doubt, we know that voting machines can be hacked. Who has custody of the voting machines? Who, beyond election officials, can access areas where the voting machines are kept?

Fayette County is on its third election director since 2020. Brieanna Garrett is the new director, and she formerly worked for the Clayton County Board of Elections.

Serious question in all 159 counties: How do we know someone has not tampered with the equipment before the security tape and numbered zip ties are attached, and which county employees have keyed access to the storage and prep rooms? How are full-time elections staff vetted?

Remember, 20 to 30 votes can win local races (we have seen that in Fayette County), several hundred votes could decide state races, and Donald Trump lost Georgia by less than 12,000 votes. Bad actors do not need to hack every voting machine, just enough to win.

Ask me how I know

As a Fayette County commissioner, I had access to most of the county’s administrative complex. Before one of our board meetings, I tripped on some large black cases lining the hallway outside our public meeting room.

I asked why the large cases were blocking an exit at the end of the hallway. I was told those were county election machines moved out of the public meeting room for the board of commissioners’ meeting. That’s when I realized I could steal all those machines overnight, manipulate them, and bring them back early the next morning.

There was an exit door at the back of the building next to the machines. When the public entered the meeting room, someone could have taped the exit door latch open, and no one would know.

I got worried and asked about the other early voting locations. At the time, the Tyrone and Peachtree City libraries were early voting locations, and the machines were left there overnight during early voting (this was before printed ballots came in 2020).

I asked our staff how many people, including staff from the library, public works, public safety, and elected officials, had access to the library in Tyrone, for example. No one in our elections department knew the answer. It only takes one person with an ideological bent or susceptible to a bribe to give bad actors access.

I suggested constructing a thick, heavy metal cage to keep the equipment overnight. I was told they made one.

Before you think this is a little far-fetched, in 2017, a man stole two election machines from a Cobb County precinct. He stole the ones with all the personal voter data used to check in the voters. The county government waited two days before making the theft public.

In 2020, Fayette County’s vote scan tabulation machine stopped working. Technicians were called in and proceeded to disable the security seals. At one point, I was told the technician plugged a laptop computer into the machine. As I understood the situation, the memory was full. The technician removed the memory card, handed it to a local elections official, and placed new memory in the machine.

The issue with the vote scan tabulation machine violated probably every security protocol the state had.

In January 2021, a local election official in Coffee County, Georgia, allowed political operatives to gain unauthorized access to their voting systems. She merely escorted them into the room and permitted them to open and copy whatever they needed.

Raffensperger’s office knew nothing about Coffee County until it came out in an investigation for another election trial.

What happened in Coffee County could occur in any county.

What can you do?

Communicate with all your local and state officials, following the cybersecurity experts’ advice, and advocate for hand-marked ballots that are optically scanned.

Raffensperger’s office had such a weak case in the voting machine lawsuit under Judge Totenberg in 2024 that they dropped the technology arguments and revised their defense to claim the state did not have the funding to change to hand-marked ballots and that there was too little time to train election staff across the state on a new system.

Sterling, chief operating officer for the Secretary of State’s Office, testified that changing in early 2024 “would be a monumental task,” and that making the change so close to the general election in November would be “nightmarish.” But isn’t that what the Secretary of State’s Office did for the 2020 election, installing a new voting system late in the game and accelerating staff training?

No more excuses in 2025. Secure our elections.

[Brown is a former mayor of Peachtree City and served two terms on the Fayette County Board of Commissioners. You can read all his columns by clicking on his photo below.]