OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Officials with President Joe Biden’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency have asked a court not to release a report that analyzed Dominion Voting Systems equipment that was used in Georgia.
The CISA was recently given an unredacted copy of the report, prepared by University of Michigan Center for Computer Security and Society Director J. Alex Halderman that is said to “potential vulnerabilities in Dominion ImageCast X ballot marking devices,” or electronic voting devices, the government said, The Epoch Times reported.
While CISA supports public disclosure of any vulnerabilities and associated mitigation measures with election equipment, allowing the release of the report at this point “increases the risk that malicious actors may be able to exploit any vulnerabilities and threaten election security,” government lawyers said in a Feb. 10 filing in the case.
The case was brought in 2017 by good-government groups and voters who say the lack of paper ballots undermines the voting process.
U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg, an Obama nominee overseeing the case, was urged by CISA to reject attempts to release a redacted version of Halderman’s report for now.
CISA officials want to review the information in the report and help Dominion resolve the vulnerabilities identified before the report is released. They said they weren’t able to provide a date by which they’ll be finished.
Totenberg must weigh the request against the wishes of Georgia Secretary State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican and one of the defendants, who called in late January for the release to happen immediately.
“I’m calling on J. Alex Halderman, the author of a report on alleged vulnerabilities in the Dominion equipment, to ask the judge to publicly release his findings on Georgia’s election system and his pre-2020 election testimony. Halderman was given full access to Georgia’s election system by the judge, the equivalent of having the keys and alarm codes to a home then claiming he found a way to break in. The public deserves to know the context of J. Alex Halderman’s claims and his testimony regarding the 2020 election. We are taking on these claims in court, and we will win. Sensationalized media articles and misleading reports from paid activists notwithstanding, Georgia’s election system is safe and secure.” Raffensperger said.
“Security assessments of any system, including voting systems, should always include a holistic approach of all safeguards in place, including procedural and technical safeguards. There is a reason why US voting systems rely on bipartisan election officials, poll-watchers, distributed passwords, access controls, and audit processes. The review conducted in the Curling case did not take this approach. Dominion supports all efforts to bring real facts and evidence forward to defend the integrity of our machines and the credibility of Georgia’s elections,” John Poulus, President and CEO of Dominion Voting Systems, said.
Raffensperger argued that the report “is not an objective, academic study by a non-biased actor. It is assertions by an individual who is paid to espouse opinions supporting the elimination of electronic voting systems to help a lawsuit brought by liberal activists, including one funded by Stacey Abrams’ Fair Fight Action.”
But before the CISA got its copy of the report, plaintiffs in the case said that it should get the report and it “should not unreasonably delay the public disclosure of the report, which must be promptly disclosed to Georgia state and county election officials, and filed on the public docket, so that public officials can secure the upcoming May primary elections.”
“We do support public disclosure of a slightly redacted copy of the report and have been pushing for that for months,” one of the plaintiffs, David Cross, said to The Epoch Times.
“His lawyers have objected to every request we and Dr. Halderman have made to the Court over the last several months to make the report public and provide it to federal and state election security officials. His implication that Dr. Halderman or the judge has prevented him and his office from learning the substance of the report and addressing the many serious BMD vulnerabilities identified in it is simply untrue,” he said.
