Georgia official downplays existence of voting machine issues ahead of 2024, despite expert concerns

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has refused to address potential security vulnerabilities with the state’s voting machines, despite increased concern from cyber security experts, Politico reported.

A 2021 audit made public in June found that Georgia’s voting machines, which run on Dominion’s ImageCastX software, had a slew of vulnerabilities that leave open the possibility of vote-tampering or fraud, according to Politico. Alex Halderman, the cyber security specialist who performed the study, has advocated that Georgia install software upgrades to tighten security – but Raffensperger’s decision means that won’t be an option until after the 2024 election.

“No grand conspiracies would be necessary to commit large-scale fraud, but rather only moderate technical skills of the kind that attackers who are likely to target Georgia’s elections already possess,” Halderman said in his report. “The fact that Georgia’s [machines] are so vulnerable is all but certain to be exploited by partisan actors to suppress voter participation and cast doubt on the legitimacy of election results.”

But Raffensberger insisted that Georgia’s voting machines are “secure” and that people who don’t agree are “election-denying conspiracy theorists,” according to a letter posted on Tuesday.

“These…groups make ever-shifting but always baseless assertions that Georgia’s election system is at risk because bad actors might hack the system and change the result of an election,” Raffensberg wrote in the letter. “It’s more likely that I could win the lottery without buying a ticket.”

“The Halderman report was the result of a computer scientist having complete access to the Dominion equipment and software for three months in a laboratory environment,” Raffensberg wrote.

Halderman called Raffensperger’s decision to not upgrade the machine’s security software “astonishing” in a June 14 tweet.

That’s worse than doing nothing. By broadcasting that Georgia is not going to patch, Raffensperger has given would-be adversaries a whole 18 months to develop and execute attacks that exploit the known-vulnerable machines.

— J. Alex Halderman (@jhalderm) June 14, 2023

Raffensperger assured the security of the machines based on another audit of Georgia’s voting systems by the nonprofit MITRE, which was commissioned by Dominion in 2022. The review, which was created in response to the flaws Halderman identified, found that proposed attempts to tamper or hack the voting machines are “operationally infeasible.”

More than 20 election security experts signed a letter that called the MITRE review “dangerously misleading.”

“MITRE should immediately retract its analysis, which fails to account for the real-world conditions under which election equipment is stored and operated and for deficiencies in Georgia’s election audits,” the letter reads.

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) reviewed Halderman’s findings and warned that the flaws in the machines “should be mitigated as soon as possible.” They also noted that there is currently no evidence that these flaws were exploited in past elections.

Raffensperger’s office did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

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