Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Gabe Sterling
Earlier this week, on April Fools’ Day of all days, a decision from a Federal court in Georgia began to reverberate through social media. The decision to dismiss the Curling v. Raffensperger case after an eight-year-long battle waged by the Coalition for Good Governance and Marilyn Marks shocked many who followed the case and 17-day trial closely.
I covered this case closely for The Gateway Pundit, flying up to Atlanta, Georgia. for two weeks to cover the trial in Judge Amy Totenberg’s court. The case to ban ballot-marking devices (BMDs) should have been a slam dunk after Dr. J. Alex Halderman hacked the machines several different ways in front of the judge, even going as far as hacking the machine so that the ballot appeared in every way as if it was an accurate representation of the voter’s intent. But when Dr. Halderman scanned the ballot, it was tabulated with a completely different result.
BREAKING: 8 Year-Long Curling v. Raffensperger Federal Lawsuit on Electronic Voting Machines DISMISSED on Standing
Despite Dr. Halderman demonstrating these hacks in real-time using simple items like a BIC pen or a $14 “smart card” that can be purchased on Amazon, and Dr. Philip Stark of UC-Berkeley testifying that there were hundreds of thousands of ballot images and tens of thousands of hash validation files (used to authenticate ballot images were unaltered) were missing, as well as a consortium of chain of custody documents, making the 2020 General Election unverifiable, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger took to X to post perhaps the best April Fools’ ‘joke’ of the day:
This ruling is just one more resounding vindication of Georgia’s elections.
From day one, we knew these accusations were meritless.
Real-world evidence shows that Georgia’s paper ballot voting system works.https://t.co/8KG9bVzAVR
— GA Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (@GaSecofState) April 1, 2025
“Real-world evidence shows that Georgia’s paper ballot voting system works. April Fools!” He must have forgotten that last part.
So what emboldened the Georgia Secretary of State to make such an arrogant comment despite the mountains of evidence to the contrary?
The highly-anticipated 14-month wait for a ruling in the Curling v. Raffensperger case.
But Georgia’s system didn’t get a “clean bill of health” from the federal court. There was not a decision that found the machines to be “safe and secure.”
No. Judge Totenberg punted, as did almost every single judge presiding over an election case following the 2020 Presidential Election. As Sidney Powell, a victim of the lawfare waged in Georgia against President Trump et al in District Attorney Fani Willis’s pipe-dream RICO case, stated on X:
“The old ‘standing’ argument!”
The old “standing” argument!
— Sidney Powell Attorney, Author, Gladiator (@SidneyPowell1) April 1, 2025
The Decision
In this article, we will go through the 33-page ruling from Judge Totenberg that culminates with “Plaintiffs do not have standing, the Court lacks jurisdiction…”
In her ruling, Judge Totenberg acknowledges that, “Although the QR code is used to tabulate each person’s vote, voters cannot review the contents of the QR code to confirm that it accurately reflects their selections” and that the plaintiffs’ claims “concern the…interest in safeguarding the credibility and reliability of Georgia’s elections.”
She acknowledges that the issue of standing was brought up previously in the case, with it upheld both in her Court and in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals that plaintiffs did, in fact, have standing. However, Judge Totenberg invokes the Supreme Court having “more clearly defined the legal requirements for standing,” among other justifications:
“First, the Supreme Court has more clearly defined the legal requirements for standing. Second, Plaintiffs face a higher evidentiary burden to establish standing at trial than they did at earlier stages of this case – for example, by proceeding to trial, Plaintiffs no longer benefit from the favorable standards of review that helped them rebut Defendants’ pretrial motions on standing. Finally, the injuries supporting Plaintiff’s standing argument have evolved.”
Plaintiffs argued that they have standing because the voting system harms Plaintiffs in two ways: “First, they argue that the voting system makes it impossible for these voters to verify that the QR code on their printed ballots, which are used to tabulate their votes, accurately reflects the ballot selections they made on the voting machines.”
This claim was supported by the testimony and live demonstration referenced above from Dr. J. Alex Halderman with the judge acknowleding that humans cannot verify their own vote since QR codes are “not human readable.”
The second claim argues that “voters are injured by having to complete the burdensome process of revie[w]ing their ballot selections twice: once on the voting machine screen and again by verifying the limited information on their printed ballot.”
The printed ballot only shows the list of the voter’s selections while omitting other key information “such as the names of other candidates and a full description of each race or ballot question.”
After considering these two arguments, Judge Totenberg shockingly writes:
“After lengthy consideration of the parties’ arguments and voluminous trial evidence, the Court concludes that Plaintiffs lack standing to pursue their claims because neither of these asserted injuries constitute an invasion of a legally protected interest under governing precedent.”
First, Plaintiffs do not claim that Georgia’s use of a QR code…prevents the individual Plaintiffs…from voting, dilutes their votes, or prevents their votes from being counted. They instead claim that because the voting system tabulates their votes by scanning an indecipherable QR code on their printed ballots, they are unable to verify that the QR code that is tabulated accurately captures the selections that they made on the voting machine.”
Second, Plaintiff’s evidence of the burdens imposed by the voting system’s ballot-review process reflects that, although some voters may find the voting process challenging, it is not by itself an obstacle to a voter’s casting of their ballot. Because neither of these alleged injuries implicate established legally protected interests, the Court must find that Plaintiffs do not have standing. The Court thus lacks jurisdiction to consider the merits of Plaintiffs’ claims and must dismiss the case.”
In laymen’s terms, you don’t have the legal right to ensure your ballot is cast accurately, so long as you have the ability to cast your vote unimpeded.
Judge Totenberg acknowledged “substantial concerns” identified by Plaintiffs, including concerns about the administration, maintenance, and security of Georgia’s electronic voting system while specifically referencing Dr. Halderman’s testimony.
The Evidence Presented On The Record
In her ruling, Judge Totenberg acknowledges Dr. Halderman’s 2021 “extensive” report showing “how the BMD system could be targeted for outside manipulation.” She cites Dr. Halderman’s findings that “an attacker could potentially alter ballot QR codes to modify vote selections, install malware on BMDs, manipulate smart cards, alter audit logs, and obtain count-wide BMD passwords.”
Dr. Halderman testified that although “attackers can alter QR codes on printed ballots to modify voters’ selections,” voters “have no practical way to confirm that the QR codes match their intent.” His report explained that unencrypted QR codes, like those found on the Dominion ICX-printed ballots, could be manipulated by an attacker installing malware on the “ordinary laser printers that are attached to BMD machines.”
He also wrote in his report that an attack can be facilitated by malware on the BMD itself, and that it could be programmed to “only alter the ballots’ QR codes and not the human-readable text that is reviewed by voters and used for election audits.”
On November 12, 2020, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Director Chris Krebs, an environmental lawyer, recklessly called the 2020 Presidential Election, “The most secure in American history.” This provided the Mockingbird Media with the necessary ammunition to “fact-check” and “debunk” legitimate claims regarding massive discrepancies, including unprecedented and curiously synchronized stoppages of vote counting in key swing states in the middle of the night followed by massive, inexplicable vote spikes exclusively for Joe Biden that overtook President Trump’s lead.
That same CISA, in early 2022, acknowledged Dr. Halderman’s findings and issued a public advisory “confirming and validating the findings regarding the BMD system’s vulnerabilities.” The acknowledged issues included installation of malware and the ability to forge poll worker, voter, and technician smart cards. The technician smart card was especially concerning because it granted unfettered access to the system with little ability to detect the intrusion.
Judge Totenberg wrote about the “attacks” demonstrated in her courtroom, acknowledging that “BMDs can be attacked by sticking a ballpoint pen in the back of the machine to reboot the BMD in safe mode, which can allow an attacker to gain access to election files and manipulate the machine.”
She also recognized Dr. Halderman’s demonstration of the “installation of vote-flipping malware using a USB device.”
Plaintiffs also presented evidence that the Poll Pads, used to check in voters, can be a vector to manipulate the voter cards assigned to voters since the Poll Pads are permitted to connect to the internet.
Lastly, Dr. Halderman testified regarding the “security breach” that occurred in Coffee County, claiming that the election software obtained could be “distributed to unauthorized recipients both within the United States and abroad.” During the trial, there was little mention of the affidavits submitted by witnesses in Coffee County, as well as the findings of Jeff Lenberg, a former nuclear systems penetration tester with high-level clearances for a government contractor.
The Ask
Given the evidence and vulnerabilities presented, Plaintiffs were seeking to enjoin Defendants from using the BMD system as the “standard method for in-person voting.” The Dominion ICX BMD is typically limited to use by individuals with disabilities. Georgia is the only state in the U.S. that rolled this system out uniformly to every county.
Additionally, they were seeking to:
“order Defendants to develop a genuine, robust, and actionable backup plan to deploy hand-marked paper ballots for statewide elections if the BMD system becomes impossible or impracticable to use
enjoin Defendants from preventing counties from choosing to use hand-marked paper ballots
complete the mitigation measures that CISA advised in June 2022
direct county superintendents to prohibit the use of equipment that has broken or missing security seals
direct county superintendents to ensure that each BMD undergoes appropriate testing to ensure that it will correctly record and tabulate every vote cast
The Georgia General Assembly passed Senate Bill 189 following the trial. This bill ensures that counties can use hand-marked paper ballots for elections with fewer than 5,000 registered voters. It also dictates that the readable printout is the “official vote for purposes of vote tabulation” and auditing. However, the tabulator itself still reads the QR code when tabulating votes.
SB 189 also eliminates the QR code as of July 2026 and “creates a process for providing scanned ballot images in response to open records requests” as of January 2025.
As for the mitigation that CISA advised, SOS Raffensperger punted on these recommendations, claiming that it would be too costly and time-consuming to update the systems prior to the 2024 Presidential Election. That was in June 2023, a full 17 months before the 2024 election.
Disallowing the use of machines with broken or missing seals should be glaringly obvious.
And most importantly, SB189 created “a pilot program to audit ballot images that verify only the human-readable portion of the ballot.”
The latter is the subject of a series The Gateway Pundit is currently publishing regarding the auditor chosen for this task, Enhanced Voting. In Part 1 of that series, it was revealed that the company tasked with the auditing is founded and led by Aaron Wilson, the former Senior Director of Election Security for the Center for Internet Security (CIS). During the 2020 election season, Wilson collaborated with the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, and CISA to create conduits for election officials and other government entities to report “mis-, dis-, and mal-information” to social media companies for censoring.
Part 1: Georgia’s 2024 Election: 2020 ‘Censorship Czar’ Receives $1.45M From GA Secretary of State for ‘Audit’
Standing
Judge Totenberg wrote that, “Like many election cases,” this turns to the federal courts’ “limited jurisdiction.”
“Before considering the merits of the Plaintiffs’ claims, the Court is required to address the threshold question of whether Plaintiffs have standing to sue under Article III of the Constitution.”
It took eight years, a 17-day trial, 14 months of deliberation, and perhaps millions of dollars in legal fees and expenditures to determine this. Absolutely unacceptable.
She also stated that Plaintiffs “fail to prove Georgia’s use of the BMD…has caused or is likely to cause them to suffer a legally cognizable injury” and therefore “the Court lacks jurisdiction to consider the merits of their claims.”
“Has caused or is likely to cause…legally cognizable injury” sticks out here. If you’ve read my work on Georgia’s elections, you may be aware of the VoterGA.org lawsuit spearheaded by Garland Favorito that challenged Fulton County to allow them to examine the physical paper ballots from the 2020 election. After this case was dismissed by Judge Brian Amero in Henry County, GA, the GA Supreme Court ruled that voters do have standing to bring election challenges in Sons of Confederate Veterans v Henry County. That was in December 2022. Since being remanded back down to the inferior courts, Favorito’s case has been waiting over 750 days for assignment.
But another investigation released by Phillip Davis, a software engineer who has dedicated the last four years to studying Georgia’s elections, found that the exact issue of the human-readable text not matching the official tabulated result did, in fact, occur in Georgia in 2020 and 2022. If having your vote counted counter to your selection isn’t “legally cognizable injury,” then our elections are nothing more than Kabuki theater.
In at least 3 counties in Georgia (he only got to a little more than 70 counties out of 159) the Cast Vote Records (CVR) do not match the corresponding ballot images.
In other words, a clear vote for Donald Trump on the physical ballot was recorded as a vote for Joe Biden on the… pic.twitter.com/8ZoyBVYsk0
— CannCon (@CannConActual) March 15, 2025
The judge later wrote:
Plaintiffs claim that this system injures the individual Plaintiffs and CGG members by (1) preventing them from verifying that data in the QR code on their printed ballot, which is scanned for tabulation, accurately reflects their vote; and (2) requiring them to undertake the burdensome process of reviewing their selections on the BMD screen and again in the small, incomplete human-readable text on their printed ballot.
Upon lengthy consideration of the trial evidence, the Court finds that Plaintiffs lack standing to pursue their claims because neither of these alleged injuries constitute an “invasion of a legally protected interest.” Although Plaintiffs have capably, thoughtfully, and diligently pursued their opposition to Georgia’s use of the BMD system, the Court cannot consider the merits of their claims without such a legally cognizable injury.
The shocking logic here is that there is no “judicially enforceable interest” in the voter’s ability to verify their vote is properly counted: “Plaintiffs instead base this theory of harm on the principle that right to vote includes ‘the right to have one’s vote counted.'”
As mentioned previously, “Plaintiffs do not claim that Georgia’s use of a QR code for tabulation…prevents the…Plaintiffs…from voting, dilutes their vote, or will prevent their vote from being accurately counted. Rather, Plaintiff’s more modest claim is that they are unable to verify the data in the QR codes on their printed ballots.” In other words, your right to cast a ballot is upheld, however, there is no established law that you have the right to know how your ballot is counted, later stating that “this injury is unlike any that the Supreme Court or Eleventh Circuit have recognized as a legally cognizable harm to voting or associated rights” so the Court is “therefore unable to conclude that the injuries identified by Plaintiffs at trial fall within ‘the zone of interests to be protected’ by the First or Fourteenth Amendments.”
In a press release from the Coalition for Good Governance, Executive Director Marilyn Marks said:
“This decision effectively treats the right to vote as merely the right to cast a ballot, not the right to know what vote is being cast and counted. That cannot be the law. A system where a voter has no way to know whether their ballot reflects their true selections is fundamentally incompatible with the constitutional right to vote.
“The Court essentially held that voters have no right to know whether the state is actually recording vote as they marked on their electronic ballot, as long as they’re allowed to press buttons on a touchscreen. This renders the right to vote an illusion.”
Besides the eight-year-long dragging on of this case, the 17-day trial, and the 14-month deliberation that drained substantial financial resources, it now sets a dangerous precedent that voters only have the right to cast a vote and no right to know that their vote was cast accurately. The foundation of our Constitutional Republic will be significantly eroded by this precedent moving forward.
The post “Lack of Standing”: Federal Court in Georgia Rules That Voters Have a Right to Cast a Vote, But Not To Ensure It Is Accurately Counted appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.