Judge Amy Totenberg (Credit: public domain)
Late Friday, U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg denied a motion by Georgia election officials to dismiss a case that claims the state’s electronic voting system is insecure.
The Curling v. Raffensperger suit was initially filed in 2017 by Democrats who want the state to ditch its electronic voting machines in favor of hand-marked paper ballots. The plaintiffs argued that the paperless touchscreen voting machines had major cybersecurity flaws that amounted to a violation of voters’ constitutional rights in the Peach State. The suit was amended in 2019 to challenge the new Dominion election system, with claims that the new voting system had similar vulnerabilities.
Since 2019, Georgia has used Dominion’s election equipment in all 159 counties, which includes 34,000 ballot machines and several thousand scanners.
The suit maintains that the voting system, “as currently designed and implemented, suffers from major cybersecurity deficiencies that unconstitutionally burden the plaintiffs First and Fourteenth Amendment rights and capacity to case effective votes that are accurately counted.”
Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and the Election Board had asked the judge to rule in its favor without the case going to trial, but Totenberg found there were “material facts in dispute” that must be adjudicated.
In her 135-page order, Totenberg detailed the relevant topics being examined in the years-long case:
• the use of computerized electronic voting systems in Georgia and the history of the cybersecurity and voting issues raised by Plaintiffs in their series of legal challenges, as previously addressed by this Court;
• the cybersecurity and reliability issues surrounding the use of the relevant electronic voting systems and the auditing of such systems and voting results;
• the cybersecurity experts’ evaluations and testimony regarding the State’s voting systems and exposure to breaches, especially in the absence of timely, needed software patches and the implementation of other cybersecurity protective measures;
• the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Agency’s (“CISA”) review of the Dominion ImageCast X system and software (currently used in Georgia) and CISA’s issuance of a national advisory notice on June 3, 2022 recommending that jurisdictions using this particular Dominion software and related technology implement specific measures to limit unauthorized access or manipulation of voting systems;
• the serious security issues and long-term ramifications surrounding the breach of the Coffee County election system and unauthorized access to the State Dominion voting software and election data, and the resulting impact on future voting security;
• Defendants’ principal defense that Plaintiffs lack standing to assert the constitutional claims raised in this case and, on the other side, the grounds Plaintiffs rely on to establish their legal standing to pursue their claims in this case — grounds including the alleged severe burden placed on their capacity to cast an effective and reliable vote by Defendants’ handling of the election system;
• The Court’s legal and evidentiary analysis of the issues in dispute raised by the Defendants’ pending Motions for Summary Judgment.
Totenberg stressed in her order that at this stage in the process, where she was considering the state’s motion for summary judgment, she was required to look at the facts in a light most favorable to the plaintiffs. At the upcoming trial, the plaintiffs have “a heavy burden to establish a constitutional violation” connected to the voting system, she wrote.
Even if she ultimately rules in their favor, she wrote, she can’t order the state to implement a paper ballot system. She said there are “pragmatic, sound remedial policy measures” that she could order or that the parties could agree upon, including: eliminating QR codes on ballots and having scanners read human-legible text; using a broader scope and number of election audits; and implementing essential cybersecurity measures and policies recommended by leading experts.
Dominion came under heavy scrutiny after the 2020 election when members of former president Trump’s legal team accused the company of flipping hundreds of thousands of votes for Joe Biden in key swing states. These concerns were roundly dismissed in the corporate media as unfounded conspiracy theories.
Dominion responded with litigation, notably reaching a $787 million settlement with Fox News in April.
In a footnote of her ruling, Totenberg made clear that the evidence in this case “does not suggest that the Plaintiffs are conspiracy theorists of any variety. Indeed, some of the nation’s leading cybersecurity experts and computer scientists have provided testimony and affidavits on behalf of Plaintiffs’ case in the long course of this litigation.”
“We look forward to presenting our full evidence at trial and obtaining critical relief for Georgia voters,” said David Cross, an attorney for some of the plaintiffs.
“But we hope this decision will be a much-needed wakeup call for the Secretary and SEB, and finally spur them to work with us on a negotiated resolution that secures the right to vote in Georgia.” (Read more: American Greatness, 11/13/2023) (Archive)
Judge Totenberg’s recent history regarding Dominion:
Corrupt Obama Judge Amy Totenberg sealed and covered up the results of an investigation of voting machines in Georgia. This report has still not been released. This week CISA released a report showing material discrepancies in these systems while attempting to downplay these material issues.
We first reported on Obama Judge Totenberg in 2018 when she got involved in that election and tried to steal the Georgia governor’s race for Democrat Stacey Abrams.
Then in 2021, Judge Totenberg committed her gravest offense as a judge. She sealed and covered up the results of the Halderman report in Georgia. To this day we don’t know what is in this report. Halderman’s investigation into the voting machines in Georgia started before the 2020 Election and was completed in July 2021.
Steve Bannon interviewed Kurt Olsen, about cybersecurity analyst, J. Alex Halderman, who found flaws in Dominion voting machines and warned about the potential for future attacks. Judge Totenberg sealed the report. According to court documents, Halderman wrote his report after he was given 12 weeks of access to an unused Dominion ICX voting machine. Professor Halderman requested the report to be unsealed to be shared with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), a standalone United States federal agency responsible for our infrastructure, including our voting systems.
Here is the interview:
The report eventually made it to the CISA and they released their report this week. Many believe that this CISA report was released in an effort to mitigate the results from the Halderman Report when it is finally released.
Judge Totenberg is the corrupt judge who also allowed Hillary’s attorney Marc Elias to use the 14th Amendment to try and prevent Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene from running in the 2022 Election:
…U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg, an Obama appointee, has been engaging in her own activism from the bench, allowing a bogus activist lawsuit to proceed, despite past court rulings that established its claims as void under the law.
The attack, masterminded by Steele Dossier architect Marc Elias, has tried to use an archaic section of the 14th Amendment to claim that Greene and several other prominent, pro-Trump Republicans, effectively seceded from the US and should be disqualified.