A self-described election integrity group sued the state of Georgia on Tuesday, seeking a ban on the use of Dominion Voting Systems touchscreen ballot-marking technology across the state.
VoterGA, which led a suit against Fulton County for an inspection of 2020 election ballots, asked the Fulton County Superior Court to declare the state’s use of Dominion Democracy Suite 5.5 Ballot Marking Device voting systems a violation of state elections law and to enjoin the officials from administrating future elections with those devices.
Plaintiffs allege Democracy Suite systems fail to comply with the state’s election code, which provides voting systems must “print an elector verifiable paper ballot” and “produce paper ballots which are marked with the elector’s choices in a format readable by the elector.”
The machines in use generate a paper ballot that voters can visually verify, but it also produces a QR code on the paper ballot reflecting the voter’s choices, which cannot be visually verified, according to the lawsuit .
Ballot scanners then read the QR code to determine a voter’s selections, and the “written portion of the paper ballot is not used for counting or re-counting the elector’s intent,” the suit said, alleging a legal violation.
“There will be immediate irreparable damage to the Petitioners and the Citizens of Georgia through their loss of confidence in the integrity of the election process by virtue of the use of ballot marking devices that fail to comply with state law,” the lawsuit said.
The lawsuit is a reincarnation of a motion previously brought in federal court against the state challenging its use of the voting systems.
Judge Amy Totenberg, an Obama administration appointee in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, declined to enjoin the state from using the Democracy Suite systems in a ruling last October for jurisdictional reasons but acknowledged they have vulnerabilities.
Referring to the state’s legal requirements that ballot marking devices print verifiable ballots and produce ballots “readable by the elector,” Totenberg said the Democracy Suite voting system “does none of those things.”
The lawsuit is the latest move by VoterGa and its co-founder, Garland Favorito, to command further changes to Georgia’s election laws and to challenge the outcome and administration of the 2020 election in Georgia.
The organization has been engaged in a monthslong court battle seeking to inspect ballots in Fulton County, which encompasses Atlanta, where former President Donald Trump and others have asserted widespread fraud during last fall’s contest.
The Washington Examiner contacted the office of Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who was the defendant in the previous federal lawsuit as the state’s top elections official, for comment on the fresh legal action. The Washington Examiner also reached out to Dominion Voting Systems for comment.
