ATLANTA (AP) – Lawyers for Georgia election officials are rejecting as frivolous allegations that their clients destroyed evidence in a case challenging the state’s outdated election system.
Election integrity advocates and individual Georgia voters sued election officials, saying the voting machines the state has used since 2002 are unsecure and vulnerable to hacking. In a court filing Thursday, they said the state began destroying evidence within days of the suit’s filing in 2017 and has continued to do so as the case moved forward.
Responding in a court filing Tuesday, lawyers for state election officials called those allegations “a desperate attempt to distract the Court and the public from the complete lack of evidence of an actual compromise of Georgia’s election system.”
The state’s election system came under national scrutiny last year during the closely watched gubernatorial election in which Republican Brian Kemp, who was the state’s top election official at the time, narrowly beat Democrat Stacey Abrams.
State officials on Monday announced that they have selected a new voting system and expect it to be in place in time for the presidential primary election on March 24. But the state still plans to use the outdated machines for special and municipal elections in the interim.