A federal judge could rule as early as today in a legal fight that might upend how Georgia runs November’s election.
The dispute centers on a last-minute software update that Georgia officials ordered on voting machines across the state. The update was prompted by a technical glitch that in some cases hid the names of some candidates in a 21-candidate special election for the U.S. Senate.
Plaintiffs in a long-running legal case say the last-minute change could create new hacking vulnerabilities – and argue there’s not enough time to test for other bugs that will make the machines malfunction during voting. They’re asking a judge to order the state to replace the machines with hand-marked paper ballots, which experts say are the most secure option and dramatically lower the chance of technical foul-ups.
The pressure’s on with less than two weeks before early in-person voting begins in Georgia and just over a month until Election Day. “Having an election that, at the end of the day, everyone can say this was the safest, most reliable option — that should be what we all want,” David Cross, an attorney with Morrison & Foerster who’s representing the Georgia voters who brought the case, told me. “Not going into an election with entirely new software that was written over a weekend.”
Marilyn Marks thread starts here: