A group of Georgia voters and a nonprofit election integrity organization seeking to force the state to use paper rather than electronic ballots in future elections have accused the secretary of state and governor of destroying evidence in the case.
The spoliation claim accuses the office of Secretary of State Brian Raffensperger and Gov. Brian Kemp, who was the secretary of state prior to his election as governor, of destroying computer servers from Kennesaw State University’s Center for Election Services, according to a brief filed Thursday. The brief was filed by attorneys representing the Coalition for Good Government and several Georgia voters.
Coalition lawyers allege in the brief that evidence was willfully destroyed despite numerous requests, notifications and discussions emphasizing the need for preservation.
The brief also claims that state officials and government lawyers failed to preserve memory cards used to program the state’s individual electronic voting machines or make forensic images of them before reusing them. It also claims that the secretary of state’s office under both Raffensperger and Kemp failed to preserve electronic data contained in the internal memories of the electronic voting machines before redeploying them.