Curling v. Raffensperger
Whether the use of direct recording electronic (DRE) voting systems that do not produce human-readable paper ballots and that have known cybersecurity vulnerabilities violates the constitution
Georgia Court Grants EPIC’s Motion to File Amicus on Ballot Secrecy: A Georgia federal court has granted EPIC’s request to file an amicus brief urging the court to protect the secret ballot. Plaintiffs presented the court with evidence that Georgia’s ballot-marking devices, which rely on large display screens, make voter choices easily viewable by others in the polling place. EPIC wrote in the amicus that “the right to cast a secret ballot in a public election is a core value in the United States.” This is the second amicus brief EPIC has submitted in the case, Curling v. Raffensperger. In the earlier amicus brief, EPIC urged the court to stop Georgia’s use of Direct Recording Electronic voting machines, which EPIC explained were unreliable and easily hacked. The court ruled that Georgia must replace the machines before the 2020 election. (Mar. 31, 2020)
Summary
Individual Georgia voters, along with a voting rights organization, brought separate § 1983 actions, later consolidated, against Georgia state officials alleging that the state’s reliance on direct recording electronic (DRE) voting systems burdened their Fourteenth Amendment rights to due process and equal protection. DRE voting machines do not produce a paper trail or any other way to independently verify each individual’s vote. DRE machines also have known cybersecurity vulnerabilities.
Plaintiffs seek, among other things, a declaration that the use of DREs is unconstitutional, and an injunction preventing Georgia from requiring voters to use DREs and requiring Georgia to use a system that produces a paper audit trail. Defendants moved to dismiss the case, arguing that Plaintiffs did not have standing and that Defendants were protected by Eleventh Amendment immunity. The District Court denied this motion. Defendants appealed this decision to the Eleventh Circuit.
The Eleventh Circuit upheld the lower court’s ruling. In May 2019, the district court addressed the defendants’ other claims, and found that res judicata or collateral estoppel from Curling I did not apply and the defendants named were the correct defendants. The Court also rejected the plaintiffs’ claim for a writ of mandamus, but denied the defendant’s motion to dismiss plaintiff’s due process and equal protection claims. The Court ordered discovery to begin immediately.
The above cases are pre 2020 election.