Tag Archives: Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger

A Victory For Election Integrity (Almost)

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On Tuesday, Yahoo News reported that a Fulton County judge has now ruled that observers will be allowed into the reporting room on Election Day.

The article reports:

State Senator Greg Dolezal, along with two co-plaintiffs, U.S. House candidate Christopher Mora and Cobb County District 1 Commissioner Keli Gambrill, filed an emergency lawsuit against Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who is a Republican gubernatorial candidate.

Fulton County Superior Court Chief Judge Ural Glanville granted the injunction, prohibiting Raffensperger and staff from excluding observers from the state’s election operations.

Judge Glanville held that Georgia law “expressly entitles properly designated poll watchers to observe the conduct of the election and the counting and recording of votes at tabulation centers and related locations.”

Judge Glanville also found that denying observation would cause injury as transparency would be lost.

Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger took office in 2019. The term of office is four years. He was elected again in 2022 and ran for Governor this year. He was defeated in the primary. To be honest, I have a lot of questions about this man’s integrity. I wonder why the people of George have elected him twice. Why would the Secretary of State want to exclude observers from the election process?

The article notes that the temporary restraining order expires May 28, unless modified. That restraining order should go through the November election.

UPDATE: I celebrated too soon.

On Monday, CBS News reported:

While Fulton County Superior Court Judge Ural Glanville originally granted a temporary suspending order allowing the poll watchers and other officials into reporting room. He reversed the decision hours later, saying that the petitioners did not comply with Georgia law when seeking the injunction against Raffensperger.

If I could, I would put the vote counting and the vote recording in a stadium with huge TV screens so everyone could see the vote counting all the time!

Missing?

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On Friday, The Federalist posted an article about a recent problem with the voter fraud investigation in Fulton County, Georgia.

The article reports:

A 2020 election scandal in Fulton County, Georgia’s most populous county, continues to grow with new details revealed in a State Election Board (SEB) meeting last Wednesday — and now, a week later, with an FBI raid seeking election documents from the county. 

Fulton County was notoriously plagued with issues like long lines and voting machine malfunctions in the 2020 primary election, problems The New York Times described as “a full-scale meltdown.” The problems continued through November’s Election Day and beyond, prompting concerns about votes being counted without proper supervision, among other things. The county’s repeated failures in 2020 so degraded trust in Fulton County’s ability to administer elections that the election director was forced to resign.

Now, members of the State Election Board have raised new concerns about the county’s administration of the 2020 election, revealing in last week’s meeting that the “tapes” used to verify that ballot counters started their counts at zero may be missing.

When a ballot scanner is used to count ballots, election officials must start the process by printing and signing a “zero tape,” which confirms the count started at zero. After counting ballots on the ballot scanner, officials must print and sign a closing tape, which confirms the final vote tally from that machine. In December, an attorney for Fulton County admitted that the county failed to sign off on more than 100 “tabulator tapes” — equivalent to about 315,000 votes — from early voting in the 2020 election. That admission was prompted by a complaint that was investigated by Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office.

The article concludes:

State law only requires the secretary of state to retain election documents for 24 months past the election, and local governments only retain “records related to the process of computing, tallying, and canvassing the vote” for two years, according to the Georgia Archives.

But, as Johnston noted in last week’s meeting, the complaint was submitted in early 2022, “well within the 24-month period.”

On Wednesday, a week after the SEB meeting, the FBI executed a search warrant at the Fulton County election office. According to election attorney Cleta Mitchell, the search warrant included “zero tapes” from the 2020 general election.

Meanwhile, the board is left with few answers. It’s unclear whether the tapes ever made it out of Fulton County, if they were signed, or even if they exist at all. If they do exist, they may have been handled properly but thrown away in the years since 2020. They could even still be filed away somewhere, where investigators have been unable to track them down. No one seems able to provide a paper trail.

The people responsible for the fraud probably figured that time would run out before their activities were discovered. Obviously, that is not the case. Hopefully, there will be enough trials and convictions to discourage anyone else from attempting to steal an election.

A Refusal To Admit The Obvious

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On Wednesday, The Federalist posted an article about the ongoing discussion of the integrity of the 2020 election in Fulton County, Georgia.

The article reports:

At the center of that effort in Georgia was Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. He repeatedly assured voters there were no problems — no violations, no misconduct, nothing to see — publicly stating there was “no sign of widespread fraud” during Georgia’s election process, refuting claims of irregularities in a letter to Congress, and again asserting that officials had not found systemic fraud.

…But just last month, Fulton County — Georgia’s most populous county — admitted that approximately 315,000 early ballots in the 2020 election were counted without the required poll worker signatures, a clear and direct violation of state regulations. County officials have further acknowledged they do not dispute that those ballots were improperly certified.

The article notes that Secretary of State Raffensperger has not cooperated with the investigation:

In December, the U.S. Department of Justice sued Georgia, seeking access to voter registration records amid concerns about whether the state is complying with federal election laws meant to prevent voter fraud and ensure only lawful votes are counted. According to the Justice Department, those records are necessary to evaluate compliance with the National Voter Registration Act, the Help America Vote Act, and the Civil Rights Act of 1960.

Raffensperger has refused to provide the records, arguing that doing so would require releasing sensitive personal information — a claim the Justice Department disputes, noting that federal law permits review of voter rolls with appropriate safeguards in place.

The article concludes:

Federal officials have been explicit about the consequences of refusing transparency. “At this Department of Justice, we will not permit states to jeopardize the integrity and effectiveness of elections by refusing to abide by our federal election laws. If states will not fulfill their duty to protect the integrity of the ballot, we will,” said Dhillon.

President Trump was right to demand answers. The American people were right to ask questions. And Georgia deserves accountability — which Raffensperger must finally face.

It seems like almost a give that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. We can’t undo that. The question is whether or not anyone will ever be held accountable.

I Told You So Just Doesn’t Cut It

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This post is based on an article posted at The Federalist on December 23. Obviously, I am a bit late to the game, but it is an important article.

The article reports:

Fulton County, Georgia, recently made an admission that should have commanded national attention. During a hearing before the Georgia State Election Board, county officials acknowledged that approximately 315,000 early ballots cast in the 2020 presidential election were unlawfully certified yet were nonetheless included in Georgia’s final, official results, in a race Joe Biden was officially declared to have won by just 11,779 votes.

The admission arose from a challenge filed by David Cross, an election integrity activist, who alleged that Fulton County violated Georgia election law in its handling of early voting. Under state statute, each ballot scanner is required to produce tabulation tapes at the close of voting, and poll workers must sign those tapes to certify the reported totals. These signed tapes are not merely an administrative safeguard. They are central to determining whether the vote count itself is legitimate.

So I guess that phone call from President Trump to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger was justified! However, that is not the point.

The article concludes:

Cross, whose persistence brought these revelations to light, has asked the State Election Board to decertify Fulton County’s 2020 advanced voting results for the historical record. His request is not aimed at changing past outcomes. We cannot undo the fact that for four years Joe Biden was president. But an official acknowledgment that Fulton County’s vote certification, and by extension the Georgia outcome, was invalid would place a permanent mark on the deliberate misconduct of those responsible and the institutional failure that enabled it, while reinforcing the principle that election law is not optional.

If the State Election Board declines to act, this episode may quietly fade from memory, leaving nothing to prevent it from happening again. Democracies do not fail when rules are broken. They fail when no one is held accountable.

Let’s put the people in jail who were responsible for this fraud, and let’s have an honest election this year and in 2028!

The Truth Comes Out

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On December 23, The Federalist posted an article about the corruption in Georgia during the 2020 election.

The article reports:

Fulton County, Georgia, recently made an admission that should have commanded national attention. During a hearing before the Georgia State Election Board, county officials acknowledged that approximately 315,000 early ballots cast in the 2020 presidential election were unlawfully certified yet were nonetheless included in Georgia’s final, official results, in a race Joe Biden was officially declared to have won by just 11,779 votes.

The admission arose from a challenge filed by David Cross, an election integrity activist, who alleged that Fulton County violated Georgia election law in its handling of early voting. Under state statute, each ballot scanner is required to produce tabulation tapes at the close of voting, and poll workers must sign those tapes to certify the reported totals. These signed tapes are not merely an administrative safeguard. They are central to determining whether the vote count itself is legitimate.

I am not saying that all of the questionable ballots were case for Joe Biden, but isn’t it interesting that it took over 300,000 questionable votes to defeat President Trump.

The article notes:

On Jan. 2, 2021, Trump called Raffensperger (Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger) to discuss the irregularities in Fulton County, mentioning the county no fewer than 14 times during the call and stating flatly that it was “totally corrupt.” Trump cited estimates of “250 to 300,000 ballots” that had been “dropped mysteriously into the rolls,” repeatedly noting that Fulton County had never been “checked.” In light of what has now been formally admitted, those claims read less like hyperbole and more like an uncannily accurate description of what actually occurred.

Rather than taking those concerns seriously as questions of whether the law had actually been followed, Raffensperger dismissed them outright, insisting that “we do have an accurate election.” What he did not disclose was that his chief of staff, Jordan Fuchs, was secretly recording the conversation in violation of the law, as The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway reported last year. Immediately after the call, Fuchs leaked the tape to The Washington Post, where, the very next day, it was selectively framed to create the now-infamous narrative that Trump had pressured Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes.”

The article concludes:

If the State Election Board declines to act, this episode may quietly fade from memory, leaving nothing to prevent it from happening again. Democracies do not fail when rules are broken. They fail when no one is held accountable.

The state needs to make restitution to all of the people who were financially destroyed by the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) case brought against the people who challenged the integrity of the Georgia election.

I Think It’s Time To Go Back To Paper Ballots

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On Saturday, The Gateway Pundit posted an article illustrating how easy it is to hack into a Dominion voting machine.

The article reports:

In June 2023, the Federal District Court for the Northern District of Georgia unsealed the 96-page Halderman Report – the Security Analysis of Georgia’s ImageCast X Ballot Marking Devices.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger had been hiding this report from the public for two years.

University of Michigan Professor of Computer Science and Engineering J. Alex Halderman and Security Researcher and Assistant Professor at Auburn University Drew Sringall collaborated on the report where they discovered many exploitable vulnerabilities in the Dominion Voting Systems’ ImageCast X system.

Far-left Judge Amy Totenberg sealed and covered up the results of the investigation of Dominion voting machines in Georgia and sat on the report until this week.

The article notes:

After the release of the report, Professor Halderman tweeted that Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger would not install Dominion’s security patches before the 2024 election.

Now this… on Friday, in a Federal Court In Atlanta, Georgia, J. Alex Halderman was able to HACK A DOMINION VOTING MACHINE to change the tabulation In Front Of U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg in the courtroom!

Halderman USED ONLY A PEN TO CHANGE VOTE TOTALS!

This is part of a long-running lawsuit by election integrity activists set as a bench trial.

The plaintiffs seek to remove what they say are insecure voting machines in Georgia in favor of secure paper ballots.

Does anyone really believe that if an unethical politician had the ability to change votes in an election that he wouldn’t? This totally calls into question the results of the 2020 election. It also provides further proof that if we don’t fix or change the system, the election of 2024 may well be stolen.

Closing The Barn Door After The Horse Has Left

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Yesterday The Washington Examiner reported that Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger is poised to remove more than 100,000 “outdated” names from the state’s voter registration rolls unless those on the list take immediate action.

The article reports:

Some critics, such as Gerald Griggs with the Atlanta NAACP, described the move as a voter purge. Griggs said thousands of voters were improperly removed from the 2019 list. However, state officials noted the removals are required by law and that the maintenance occurs every two years.

Raffensperger’s office also removed 18,486 voter files of dead individuals based on information obtained from Georgia’s Office of Vital Records and the Electronic Registration Information Center.

“These people don’t live in Georgia anymore. Then, you have 18,000 people who passed. So, they are not going to be voting anymore. You need to have accurate voter rolls and proper list maintenance. It also helps your county election directors,” Raffensperger told WSB-TV 2.o

It needs to be mentioned here for those who are concerned that voting laws aimed at reducing voter fraud are disenfranchising voters, that every illegal vote cast cancels out the vote of a legal voter. Therefore, changing voter laws to prevent fraud is actually making sure that the votes of legal voters will be counted. If the people who are being removed from the voter rolls are no longer entitled to vote in Georgia, they need to be removed from the voter rolls. The only reason to keep them on the rolls is to commit voter fraud.

How The Mistake Was Made

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The Epoch Times reported the following today:

An official in the Georgia secretary of state’s office was the only source for at least one story that falsely claimed former President Donald Trump told an investigator with the office to “find the fraud.”

Jordan Fuchs, deputy secretary of state, relayed details of the conversation to The Washington Post, an official with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger confirmed to The Epoch Times.

Fuchs was not on the call herself. She was told about the conversation by Frances Watson, the investigator.

A recording of the call recently emerged from a records request, showing that the Post and a slew of other outlets had falsely reported Trump uttering several phrases.

The office of Raffensperger, a Republican, says Fuchs did not present details of the conversation as verbatim.

“The Secretary of State’s Office’s first reports of its investigator’s phone conversation with President Trump relied on the investigator’s recollection. Information about the content of the call was never presented as a word-for-word transcript,” a spokesperson with the office told The Epoch Times via email.

That story was not only widely reported, it was used a part of the second impeachment trial of President Trump.

The article reports on the quiet corrections being made:

The Post said that it “misquoted” Trump, “based on information provided by a source.” It also outed Fuchs as its source, after previously describing her as an individual familiar with the call.

The Associated Press in its correction used similar wording in explaining that it “erroneously reported” that Trump pressured Watson to “find the fraud,” and that if she did, she would be a national hero.

CNN offered an editor’s note in stating that its initial version “presented paraphrasing of the President’s comments to the Georgia elections investigator as direct quotes.”

As author Jonathan Swift wrote, “Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it.” Often quoted as “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.” The news media’s coverage of President Trump’s conversation with a Georgia investigator illustrates that statement.

Actions Have Consequences

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Yesterday The Daily Wire reported that as many as 1,000 Georgians voted twice in the state’s June 9 primary.

The article reports:

As many as 1,000 Georgians voted twice in the state’s June 9 primary, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced on Tuesday, which is a felony that he vowed to prosecute.

“A double voter knows exactly what they’re doing, diluting the votes of each and every voter that follows the law,” Raffensperger said during a press conference at the state Capitol, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. “Those that make the choice to game the system are breaking the law. And as secretary of state, I will not tolerate it.” Double voting is punishable by one to 10 years in prison and a fine up to $100,000.

Raffensperger said the voters sent in absentee ballots, but then also voted in person. In a post-primary examination, the double votes were detected. About 150,000 people “who requested absentee ballots showed up at polling places on election day, often because they never received their absentee ballots in the mail or decided to instead vote in person,” AJC reported. “Of those, 1,000 of those voters had returned their absentee ballots to county election offices, and poll workers also allowed them to vote in-person.”

The article notes:

With Democrats pushing for nationwide vote-by-mail, where ballots are mailed to every registered voter, more reports are emerging about problems with the system. For instance, a man in California last month pleaded guilty to charges that he fraudulently cast his dead mother’s ballots in three different elections.

Caesar Peter Abutin was charged in July with one felony count of fraud and one count of fraudulent voting. He pleaded guilty to committing mail-in voting fraud three times from 2012 to 2014 using the ballots of his late mother, who died in July 2006, the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office announced. The DA’s office said he signed the name of his mother when applying for vote-by-mail ballots.

Illegal voting will continue until the penalties are enforced. Actions need to have consequences.