Tuesday, March 3, 2020

It's About Suppression, Con't

In 2018, then Georgia's Republican Secretary of State Brian Kemp, now Governor, alleged that Democrats hacked the state's election information database in order to "steal" the 2018 election in the state.  Today, the state's Republican attorney general closed the case because Democrats didn't do anything, and there was no evidence whatsoever to support Kemp's claims.

Georgia investigators found no evidence to support Gov. Brian Kemp’s allegation just before Election Day in 2018 that the Democratic Party tried to hack election information, according to a report released Tuesday by the attorney general’s office.

The attorney general’s office closed the case that Kemp had opened when he was secretary of state, overseeing the same election he was running for. Kemp made the hacking accusation two days before the election.

Kemp, a Republican, defeated Democrat Stacey Abrams by about 55,000 votes.

No election information was damaged, stolen or lost, according to the attorney general’s report. Nor were any crimes committed by the person who reported vulnerabilities with Georgia’s election registration websites to the Democratic Party and an attorney who is suing the state.

Democratic Party of Georgia Chairwoman Nikema Williams said Kemp made “outright lies” to attack his political opponents and help his election.

“More than a year after the sitting secretary of state leveraged baseless accusations against his political opponents, we’re finally receiving closure on an ‘investigation’ that has been a sham from the start,” said Williams, a state senator from Atlanta. “As we have since well before these outright lies came to light in the first place, Georgia Democrats will continue to do everything in our power to fight back against voter suppression.

A spokeswoman for Kemp said his office did the right thing by asking law enforcement agencies, including the FBI and GBI, to investigate.

“We appreciate the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and attorney general’s office for investigating a failed cyber intrusion before the November 2018 election,” said Candice Broce, a spokeswoman for Kemp. “More importantly, we are grateful that the systems put in place by Brian Kemp as Georgia’s secretary of state kept voter data safe and secure.”

The report from the office of Attorney General Chris Carr, a Republican, found that there were some vulnerabilities with the state’s online voter registration systems. Those issues were corrected by contractors for the secretary of state’s office.

However, the vulnerabilities were different from those alleged by Richard Wright, the Georgia resident who called attention to them, according to the report. Wright had said that anyone could download state voter registration information and any voter's registration card.

Wright was wrong when he claimed that election systems weren't secure, Broce said. She said Wright refused to cooperate with the investigation.

“While the evidence in this case properly gave rise to concerns that were appropriately addressed by law enforcement, the investigation did not reveal any evidence to support the criminal prosecution of Mr. Wright,” according to a memo from Senior Assistant Attorney General Laura Pfister. “Therefore, I recommend closing the file at this time.”

The vulnerabilities under Kemp's run as Secretary of State get fixed, he gets to remain governor after alleging massive election fraud two days before the vote, and he gets away with it in a close race with Stacey Abrams.

If Abrams had ended up winning, bet your life Kemp would have "found evidence" that the Democrats had "hacked" the election.

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