ATLANTA (AP) – Georgia’s secretary of state on Thursday called on a voting technology expert to ask a judge to release a report detailing alleged security vulnerabilities in the voting machines used by the state – something the expert had already done.
The report by J. Alex Halderman was filed under seal in July in federal court in Atlanta as part of a long-running lawsuit challenging Georgia’s voting machines. Halderman spent 12 weeks examining the Dominion Voting Systems machines used in Georgia and more than a dozen other states and identified “multiple severe security flaws” that would allow attackers to install malicious software, he wrote in a sworn declaration filed in the case.
Halderman, a voting technology specialist and director of the University of Michigan’s Center for Computer Security and Society, told The Associated Press in August that he’d seen no evidence the machines’ vulnerabilities were used to tamper with the 2020 election, but he said, “there remain serious risks that policymakers and the public need to be aware of.”
State and federal officials have repeatedly said there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud during the 2020 election.
The report was initially classified “attorneys’ eyes only.” That meant the actual parties to the case couldn’t see it, only their lawyers and experts could. In a declaration filed with the court in July, Halderman urged public disclosure of a redacted version of his findings.