The recent op-ed praising Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and the new Election Integrity Task Force claims that concerns about Georgia’s elections are little more than “conspiracy theories” that have unfairly damaged public confidence. This framing is not only inaccurate — it is contradicted by multiple documented cases, court findings, and official records that reveal serious, recurring problems with Georgia’s voting system. If Georgia’s elections are truly the most secure, fair, and accurate in the nation, why did the Secretary of State feel the need to create an Election Integrity Task Force? Let’s examine the record.
These issues are not abstract theories. They involve missing ballot images, double-counted ballots, unverifiable QR codes, compromised security credentials, and repeated failures to follow basic chain-of-custody requirements. These problems have been raised in federal court, adjudicated by the State Election Board, and confirmed through open records requests.
In the 2022 DeKalb County Commission primary, candidate Michelle Long Spears initially appeared to finish third. After precinct-level analysis showed zero votes for her in the precinct where she votes, she requested a hand recount. The Secretary of State’s office opposed the request. When DeKalb County conducted the hand count anyway, Spears moved from third place to first. This single race demonstrated that the electronic results could not be trusted without a human-verified paper trail.
In the Rossi/Moncla case (SEB2023-025), the State Election Board confirmed that Fulton County produced 17,852 ballots with no corresponding ballot images, 20,713 votes that could not be traced to any source tabulator, and 3,125 double-counted ballots in the 2020 General Election. The case also documented more than 140 election code violations by Fulton County. These findings were not made by activists — they were accepted by the Governor’s office and adjudicated by the State Election Board itself.
In the federal case Curling v. Raffensperger, cybersecurity expert Dr. Alex Halderman demonstrated in open court before Judge Amy Totenberg that he could hack a Georgia ballot-marking device using only a ballpoint pen and change votes. Judge Totenberg had already ruled that the QR codes generated by these machines violate Georgia law (O.C.G.A. § 21-2-300) because voters cannot verify that the QR code accurately reflects their choices. The system also conflicts with the federal Help America Vote Act’s requirement that ballots be humanly verifiable. Other expert testimony in this case revealed that risk-limiting audits based on ballotmarking devices are meaningless, as the voter’s intent can never be known — what was shown to the voter on the touchscreen is not verifiable.
In the DeKalb GOP v. Raffensperger case, open records requests revealed that Dominion’s X.509 encryption certificates were stored in plain text on the Election Management System servers. Using these certificates, the system administrator password was decrypted and has since appeared on publicly available merchandise. Both of these issues violate basic cybersecurity protocols for securing election computer equipment and role-based access controls.
After the 2024 election, analysis of Dominion tabulator tapes from multiple counties found that poll workers were certifying results under the “Local Election Authority Act” — a Canadian statute that does not exist in Georgia. This error had gone unnoticed since the Dominion system was installed in 2020. When it was brought to the attention of the Secretary of State’s office in January 2025, a chief of staff reportedly responded that “it doesn’t matter.” The language was only corrected for the next election cycle after legislative pressure.
Hellbound and Down 