HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.
![handle is hein.congcourts/fjcsselmg0001 and id is 1 raw text is:
CASE STUDIES IN EMERGENCY ELECTION LITIGATION
Challenges to a Secretary of State's
Election Management
Common Cause of Georgia v. Kemp
(Amy Totenberg, 1:18-cv-5102) and Brown v. Kemp
(William M. Ray II, 1:18-cv-5121) (N.D. Ga.)
Two federal lawsuits filed on the day before and the day of a general
election challenged a secretary of state's election oversight. The first
case alleged susceptibility to tampering of voters' records. The sec-
ond case challenged the propriety of a secretary of state presiding
over an election in which he is running for governor. A related case
from the previous year challenged the security of touchscreen voting
machines. A federal judge ordered the use of provisional ballots as
an interim remedy for voter record discrepancies, pursuant to the
Help America Vote Act. Apparently the winner of the gubernatorial
election, the secretary notified the judge in the other case of his res-
ignation as secretary of state.
Subject: Voting procedures. Topics: Voting technology;
provisional ballots; case assignment; Help America Vote Act
(HAVA); laches; removal; enjoining certification.
Two federal lawsuits, filed in the Northern District of Georgia on the day be-
fore and on the day of the 2018 general election, challenged election oversight
by Georgia's secretary of state. They were related to litigation initiated in 2017
over ballot technology.
Susceptibility to Security Breaches
[A cybersecurity sleuth] was taken aback when [a Googlel query turned
up a file with a list of voters and then alarmed when a subsequent simple data
pull retrieved the birth dates, drivers' license numbers and partial Social Se-
curity numbers of more than 6 million voters, as well as county election su-
pervisors' passwords for use on Election Day. He also discovered the server
had a software flaw that an attacker could exploit to take control of the ma-
chine.'
Common Cause of Georgia filed a federal complaint in the Northern Dis-
trict against Georgia's secretary of state on November 5, 2018, one day before
the general election, alleging that the state's voter registration website was im-
properly susceptible to security breaches and urging the use of provisional bal-
lots in cases of registration questions.2 On the following day, Judge Eleanor L.
Ross reassigned the case from herself to Judge Amy Totenberg as related to a
2017 case over which Judge Totenberg was presiding.'
1. Ellen Nakashima, Georgia Faces Legal Challenge Over Its Voting Technology, Wash. Post,
Sept. 17, 2018, at A13.
2. Complaint, Common Cause of Ga. v. Kemp, No. 1:18-cv-5102 (N.D. Ga. Nov. 5, 2018),
D.E. 1.
3. Order, id. (Nov. 6, 2018), D.E. 4.
Federal Judicial Center 12/20/2018
1](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.congcourts/fjcsselmg0001&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)