chevron.removeClass('fa-chevron-up'); She said in interviews that she hoped the Georgia businessman who visited later, Scott Hall, and others who accompanied him could help identify vulnerabilities and prove that this election was not done true and correct.. Meanwhile, some prominent election deniers have sought help from officials with access to protected voting systems, and others including Peters in Colorado are running to oversee elections as secretaries of state. She gave The Post what she said were text messages with Chaney in which she mentioned Hall. He said on the call that he had not received a report from the team about its findings. Hampton told them that rogue election officials could have flipped votes in other jurisdictions and that ballots could have been scanned and counted multiple times, according to the minutes. - to the Coffee County systens (sic). The operation continued for hours. SAVANNAH, Ga. (WTOC) - Coffee Bluff Road is closed to all traffic south of Vernon River Drive due to downed power lines across the road, according to Savannah police. Coffee County, Georgia, under scrutiny after claim of post-election We basically had the entire elections committee there. Among those involved in the Oval Office discussion were two prominent pro-Trump conspiracy theorists: Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser, and Sidney Powell, a lawyer who spread numerous falsehoods after the 2020 election and who also discussed Mr. Giulianis comments in her testimony. In Antrim County, Mich., which was at the forefront of efforts to overturn the election, Sheryl Guy, the clerk, said on Thursday that officials had to rent voting equipment to replace equipment that is being held as evidence in civil litigation. Were all voters required to present ID at the polls? Patricia Murphy points out thatKemp can have fundraising success outside the party. I dont see why anything that is dealing with elections is not open to the public, Hampton said. It's in the middle of downtown. The visitors to Coffee County apparently saw it as an ideal place to gather intelligence on what they viewed as voting irregularities: At one point, video footage shows the then-chair of the Coffee County Republican Party, Cathy Latham, appearing to welcome into the building the members of a forensics company hired by Ms. Powell. Byrne said Hall told him that he and others had made a trip to Coffee County to try to get access to election equipment. In the days after Bidens victory, officials in Coffee County about 200 miles southeast of Atlanta voiced suspicions of fraud, elections board meeting minutes show. In the following weeksas Trump was impeached for his role in stoking the Capitol riots and the illegal accessing of voting machines came into focusword got out about their secret mission in Douglas. The Coffee County data was also used earlier this year in a presentation to conservative activists that included unfounded allegations of electoral fraud, The Los Angeles Times has reported. Find Voter Records related to Coffee County Board of Elections. WebRT @MuellerSheWrote: In January, 2021, two men named Scott Hall and Paul Maggio were escorted into the Coffee County Georgia elections office by one of the Georgia fraudulent electors (Cathy Latham) where they stole voting data from a voting machine at the direction of Sidney Powell. The operatives then spent hours inside the office copying election data. Navigate to Georgia 2022 local elections overviews: This month, Michigans attorney general, Dana Nessel, a Democrat, sought the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate data breaches there. #content { Copyright 2021 WALB. Click the links below to learn more: Click here to use Ballotpedia's sample ballot to find every election that Ballotpedia has on file for your address. Voting experts said that, whether they accessed sensitive areas or not, Hamptons actions underscore a growing risk to election security. Georgia runoff election: Sen. Raphael G. Warnock (D) won re-election in the Georgia Senate runoff, defeating Republican challenger Herschel Walker and giving Democrats a 51st seat in the Senate for the 118th Congress. Now that Halls mission was unraveling in the public eye, he reached out to an election rights activist to recount his experience in Douglas. }); chevron.removeClass('fa-chevron-down'); chevron.addClass('fa-chevron-up'); Click the links below to Send the note to: editor@ballotpedia.org. Adrienne Jones, @adriennemjns, professor of political science and director of pre-law, Morehouse College, Edward Lindsey,@edlindsey14, former state representative (R), State Rep. Mary Margaret Oliver,@mmo_mary, (D) Decatur, Patricia Murphy, @MurphyAJC, political reporter and columnist, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The group seeks to expose what it considers ongoing vulnerabilities in Georgias electronic-only voting system. A two-minute and thirty-six-second snippet of that call was presented to a federal judge in a case led by Marks voting rights group. Was early voting available to all voters? The local news website Douglas Now covered their resignations in early March. In the audio recording, Hall described the people responsible for copying hard drives in Coffee County as the same people that went up to Michigan and did all that forensic stuff on the computers.. if (chevron.hasClass('fa-chevron-down')) { The likelihood of him trying again is greater now because his loyalists are now in much stronger positions throughout state and federal government. The discrepancy was not nearly enough to change the result of the Whatever Halls team found, it didnt amount to much. COFFEE COUNTY, Ga. Georgia's secretary of state's office is investigating whether an activist had inappropriate access to an election server in a county in 2021. Why would you want to hide anything?. Third party advertisements support hosting, listing verification, updates, and site maintenance. Scott Hall is on the phone with Cathy about wanting to come scan our ballots from the general election like we talked about the other day. New York trial could confer new title on Donald Trump: rapist, Four-time loser Trump may not be nominee for 2024, Republican insists, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning, 2023 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. They said in part, every other county was able to complete this task within the given time limits.. The former presidents participation in the discussion of the Georgia plan could increase his risk of possible legal exposure there. display: none; } Everything we have seen so far shows that the people who have been doing this have no fucking skills. 1. Latham also played a key role in the alleged breaching and copying of In Michigan, state police are investigating an alleged breach of voting equipment after the 2020 election in Roscommon County. As recently reported in the New York Times, for example, the Trump allies who traveled to Coffee county, Georgia, on 7 January 2021 gained access to sensitive election data. Find Coffee County Citizen Voting Age Population (Age 18 and Over). Mr. Trump won nearly 70 percent of Coffee County, which is home to just 43,000 people. 2/ 22 Apr 2023 20:42:43 Finally, it should not contain errors such as misspelled names, inaccurate incumbency labels, or incorrect political party affiliations. function resizeChevron() { The situation has election cybersecurity experts concerned about the actual danger to election systems posed by these vigilante expeditions, which are mainly driven by disproven conspiracy theories. Our panel breaks down the ruling, the political implications, and the future of abortion access in Georgia. Tina Peters, an elections official in Mesa County, Colo., was indicted in March on charges stemming from her alleged efforts to secretly copy a Dominion Voting Systems server last year. Similar breaches coordinated by Trump allies played out in several swing states. It should also include every candidate running in those elections, except write-ins. In the recording, the man identified as Hall told Marks that he arranged for a plane to ferry people to Coffee County and accompanied them as they went in there and imaged every hard drive of every piece of equipment and scanned ballots. We strive for our sample ballot tool to be 100% accurate. At 4:26 p.m. on Jan. 6, 2021, as rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol, she texted Chaney that Hall was discussing the possibility of scanning our ballots from the general election like we talked about the other day, according to the text messages. Im not a babysitter, she told The Post. padding-top: 80px; In response to a request from the federal judge for any documentation detailing the removal of the server, Raffenspergers office this week filed only those records in court. 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All rights reserved. Most immediately, we were granted access - by written invitation! WebCOFFEE COUNTY BOARD OF ELECTIONS & REGISTRATION. Ballot counting Mail ballot processing starts weeks before Election Day. In Colorado, the secretary of states office estimated that taxpayers incurred a bill of at least $1 million to replace voting equipment in Mesa County after a pro-Trump election supervisor was indicted on charges that she tampered with the equipment after the 2020 election. Did Trump send a team? @media only screen and (max-width: 500px) { Hall chartered a plane for a team set on copying a computer server that housed the elections management system, something that Hall, a member of that team, would later reveal on a call with an elections rights activist. Counties | Hampton made a video that went viral soon after the election, claiming to show that Dominion Voting System machines, the ones used in her county, could be manipulated. We test the tool on an ongoing basis for accuracy. A Trump supporter protested election results at the Georgia State Capitol in 2020. Her video fueled the quickly coalescing conspiracy theories and came at the perfect timejust as Trump advocate lawyer Sidney Powell and others launched so-called Kraken conspiracy lawsuits with bogus allegations of voting fraud. When Hampton reached out to Chaney that evening, he directed her to take the communications to an encrypted app with disappearing messages. WebRT @MuellerSheWrote: In January, 2021, two men named Scott Hall and Paul Maggio were escorted into the Coffee County Georgia elections office by one of the Georgia fraudulent electors (Cathy Latham) where they stole voting data from a voting machine at the direction of Sidney Powell. The testimony, delivered to the House Jan. 6 committee, was highlighted on Friday in a letter to federal officials from a liberal-leaning legal advocacy group. Some of those involved with the Coffee County effort came to regret it. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. All of them, including Ms. Latham, have been identified as targets of Ms. Williss investigation. The report supports past warnings about the software made by University of Michigan cybersecurity researcher J. Alex Halderman, who first spotted those weaknesses in a report that remains sealed by the federal judge. Thank you for using Ballotpedia's sample ballot tool. Gov. widget_load_check_dom() Atlanta, GA 30318 Enter your email if you would like to receive Ballotpedia's election news updates in your inbox. Texts reviewed by 11Alive and obtained through a years-long civil lawsuit challenging the security of Georgias electronic voting systems show Trump allies were invited to inspect the county's voting system. Honestly don't know who would know all I know is what the paper said., Latham did, however, say she relayed doubts about Coffee Countys election system to Georgia Republican Party leadership on a Zoom call in the days after the November 2020 election, when the local board of elections refused to certify election results because it could not replicate the original results during a recount. Both Latham and Trump want Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and her office barred from any further investigation or prosecutions related to the election. function widget_load_check_dom(){ | At 3:48 p.m., Hampton updated the GOP chair. Concerns about unauthorized access to these machines could receive a jolt, given the latest assessment by the Department of Homeland Securitys Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. But what if Trump gets secretaries of state and governors who are loyal to him to alter the election machinery to ensure he wins? Do you know where the elections board is? Insider threat, while always part of the threat matrix, is now a reality in elections, said Matt Masterson, who previously served as a senior U.S. cybersecurity official tracking 2020 election integrity for the Department of Homeland Security. He indicated that he was not successful. VoterInfobyState_Toggle = true; .sample-ballot-mobile-promo, .mobile-app-cta { VoterInfobyState_Resized = true; Testimony to the Jan. 6 committee from one aide who attended the meeting, Derek Lyons, a former White House staff secretary and counselor, was highlighted on Friday in a letter to the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation from Free Speech for People, a liberal nonprofit legal advocacy group. This means that, for offices within our coverage scope, a person's sample ballot results should include every election that will appear on their actual ballot. Ballotpedia features 408,486 encyclopedic articles written and curated by our professional staff of editors, writers, and researchers. The most obvious question in American politics today should be: why is the guy who committed treason just over two years ago allowed to run for president? There are specific laws in Georgia that prevent access to voting equipment in particular, he said, as well as general laws about accessing computer equipment that doesnt belong to you.. It remains unclear to what extent Ms. Williss office will focus on the Coffee County matter in her inquiry, or what, if any, charges could flow from it. Ms. Latham was also one of the 16 pro-Trump fake electors whom Georgia Republicans had assembled in an effort to reverse the election results there. What if, despite all of this, Biden still wins the election but Trump gets more than 20% of Republican senators and House members to object to slates of electors pledged to Biden, and pushes the election into the House where Trump has a majority of votes? But whats really driving anxiety is that their sloppy computer work will itself plant evidence of tampering that fuels the Big Lie. The Daily Beast paid a visit to another elections board member, Carl Travis Peavy Jr., who would have been briefed on the teams visit. You dont say anything. All Rights Reserved. Ballotpedia includes comprehensive election information for the largest 100 cities by population, as well as all state legislative, statewide, and congressional races across the nation. She said she could not recall the circumstances of his visit. Last week, on the eve of the states primary elections, The Daily Beast drove to the small city of Douglas to meet with several witnesses and gather government records that confirmed peoples employment and personal relationships. (modern). The day after Donald J. Trumps supporters stormed the Capitol, a small group working on his behalf traveled to rural Coffee County, Ga., about 200 miles southeast of Atlanta. In a December hearing, long before the recorded phone call surfaced, investigators for the secretary of states office told the State Elections Board that they had found security problems in Hamptons office. chevron.removeClass('fa-chevron-up'); Despite the investigations timing, the board said both employees resigned for falsifying timesheets. Though Coffee County is well outside of her jurisdiction, Ms. Willis is seeking to build a broad conspiracy and racketeering case that encompasses multifaceted efforts by Trump allies to disrupt and overturn the lawful election of Joseph R. Biden Jr. On Aug. 16, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation also confirmed that it was working with the Georgia secretary of states office on an investigation into the Coffee County data breach, court records show. Trump officials most likely targeted the countys voting system because the county was run by friendly officials who were eager to cooperate. Voting systems are considered by the federal government to be critical infrastructure, vital to national security, and access to their software and other components is tightly regulated. If so, was a photo or non-photo ID required? } Even more coincidentally, Coffee County has deleted all emails of their election officials from that period, and improperly gave Secretary Raffenspergers office all of their 2020 electronic election records, wiping the county clean of evidence of what occurred. ADDRESS. Plus, the future of access to the abortion drug mifepristone is up in the air. It was part of an effort by Trump allies in a number of swing states to access and copy sensitive election software, with the help of friendly election administrators. } He currently works as a producer with GPB'sPolitical Rewindteam. The obvious worry is that these teams might find vulnerabilities and share them with hackers who can actually exploit them. #contentwrapper { How could somebody sneak here? } Attorneys for Raffensperger told the judge last month that the secretary of states office took possession of the old server because a former elections official, whom they did not name, changed a password, making it impossible for others to get into the machine. Latham also played a key role in the alleged breaching and copying of election data in Coffee County on Jan. 7, 2021. Prosecutors don't identify the alleged crime or the elector who may have violated state law. Hampton told The Post she did not change any password. Questions about Hamptons interactions with Hall surfaced only in recent months, in a long-running federal lawsuit filed by the Coalition for Good Governance and others against the Georgia secretary of states office. Donald Trump lost re-election but refused to concede and instead claimed without basis that the election was stolen from him, then pushed state officials to change their tallies, hatched a plot to name fake electors, tried to persuade the vice-president to refuse to certify electoral college votes, sought access to voting-machine data and software, got his allies in Congress to agree to question the electoral votes and thereby shift the decision to the House of Representatives, and summoned his supporters to Washington on the day electoral votes were to be counted and urged them to march on the US Capitol, where they rioted. And they scanned all the equipment, imaged all the hard drives, and scanned every single ballot. .widget-toggle-tabs li.panel > a:after {font-family: 'Glyphicons Halflings';content: '\e113';float: right;color: grey}.widget-toggle-tabs li.panel > a.collapsed:after {content: '\e080'} Ernestine Thomas-Clark, who was chair of the five-member county elections board and its lone Democrat around the time of the 2020 election, said that she was unaware of any effort to copy data from the machines and that no one had asked her permission to do so. I am your justice. Board Chair, Ernestine Thomas-Clark, said the Board of Elections and Registrations Office resumed operations, the first of this month. A law firm hired by SullivanStrickler, the consulting firm hired by Ms. Powell to help gain access to the countys voting machines, would later release a statement saying that, With the benefit of hindsight, and knowing everything they know now, they would not take on any further work of this kind., Testimony Suggests Trump Was at Meeting About Accessing Voting Software, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/21/us/trump-voting-software-2020-election.html. 2/ 22 Apr 2023 20:42:43 This Jan. 7, 2021, image taken from Coffee County, Ga., security video, appears to show Cathy Latham (center, long turquoise top), introducing members of a computer forensic team to local election officials. Huge things are starting to come together! Select an Option. Surveillance footage shows Latham escorting operatives working with former Trump attorney Sidney Powell through the front door of the county's election office. } Hampton told The Post last week that no investigators have contacted her about Halls claims. They later filed the audio in court. Ms. Powell did not immediately respond to a request for comment. *County. However, in a court filing on Wednesday, lawyers for the office informed U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg that the only paperwork reflecting the investigation and its seizure of the potentially exposed machine is a cryptic technical document that shows how a new machine was brought online there on June 8, 2021. All rights reserved. Those lawyers hedged that the search for documents was conducted during a trial and during ongoing elections. The state agency is expected to face questions about this during a court hearing next week. $("div.vis_widget_title").click(function(){ Legal experts say the Fulton County investigation could be particularly perilous for Mr. Trumps allies, and perhaps for Mr. Trump himself, given the phone call that Mr. Trump made as president to Georgias secretary of state on Jan. 2, 2021, asking him to find enough votes to help him overturn his election loss in the state. LISTEN: Patricia Murphy on Kemp's relationship with the state's GOP. Does anyone doubt the possibility no, the probability of any or all of this happening? I dont know anything about it, she told The Post. If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why The very next day, he hired Riddlehoover to work at his used car dealership, Chaney Motors, Hampton and Latham both told The Daily Beast. Catch up quick: The secretary of state investigated Coffee County over if (typeof VoterInfobyState_Toggle === 'undefined') { Georgia Public Radio GPTV, Political Rewind: DA Fani Willis says charges due this summer; Biden announces reelection bid, Political Rewind: With less than 24 hours until the runoff, Warnock and Walker make final pitches, Political Rewind: Georgia's six-week ban on abortions is now law, effective immediately, The FBI doesnt appear to be investigating. Coffee County, Georgia, held elections for local offices in 2022. Both the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and Fulton County District Attorney are investigating the breach. When election officials permit or facilitate untrustworthy actors in gaining access to the system without any oversight, that is in and of itself going to leave the public questioning whether they trust these systems., Election Data Breach Attracts Georgia Investigators, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/27/us/georgia-trump-coffee-county-election.html. Participants in that effort including employees of the Atlanta-based data security firm Sullivan Strickler and former pro surfer Conan Hayes, who was then working with Byrne either declined to comment or did not respond to a request for comment. One, in Mesa County, Colorado, has already led to an indictment. Latham, reached at her home, sat down and spoke to The Daily Beast on her front porch for nearly an hour but professed ignorance about any details of the teams visit. Overwhelming evidence shows that supporters of then-President A former elections supervisor in rural Coffee County, Ga., has told The Washington Post that she opened her offices to a businessman active in the election-denier movement to help investigate results she did not trust in the weeks after President Donald Trumps 2020 defeat. } } Select an upcoming election date, if there is more than one coming up in your area. (Notably, all three branches of the federal government have described the January 6 attack on the US Capitol as an insurrection.). I am going to call you in a few, Hampton wrote to her boss in a text message conversation we obtained. display: block; On Jan. 7, 2021, a small group working on behalf of Mr. Trump traveled to rural Coffee County, Ga., some 200 miles southeast of Atlanta, and gained access to sensitive election data; subsequent visits by pro-Trump figures were captured on video surveillance cameras. Byrne said Hall told him he did not know whether they succeeded in obtaining sensitive data, such as a copy of the hard drive of the server. Hamptons successor, James Barnes, emailed Raffenspergers office on May 7, 2021, to say he had found a business card from Doug Logan of Cyber Ninjas at the base of Hamptons former computer. In the year and a half since the 2020 election, there has been a steady drumbeat of revelations about alleged security breaches in local elections offices and a growing concern among experts that officials who are sympathetic to claims of vote-rigging might be persuaded to undermine election security in the name of protecting it. } Find 6 Boards Of Elections within 31.3 miles of Coffee County Board of Elections. Trump tried these tactics once. WebSee your ballot, research candidates and referendums, and vote informed } Find 5 external resources related to Coffee County Board of Elections. Latham, a retired school teacher, was one of 16 Republicans who cast Electoral College ballots falsely claiming Trump won the 2020 presidential election. to conduct a vigorous and swift investigation.. Hampton said she followed election board guidance in her handling of time sheets. SullivanStrickler, in a statement released by a law firm representing the company, said it has never been part of a pro-Trump team or any team whose goal is to undermine our democracy, adding that it was a politically agnostic firm that was hired to preserve and forensically copy the Dominion voting machines used in the 2020 election. The statement said it was categorically false that SullivanStrickler was part of an effort that illegally breached servers or other voting equipment, adding that it was retained and directed by licensed, practicing attorneys., The firm elected to cease any further new work on this matter after the Jan. 7 time period, the statement said. State and local courts | The official story was that they had faked their employee timesheets by claiming to be in the office when they werent (something Hampton readily admitted to The Daily Beast and justified as making up for accrued comp time). In the weeks after the election, Coffee County quickly emerged as a The costs of election security breaches have been onerous. As recently reported in the New York Times, for example, the Trump allies WebRT @MuellerSheWrote: In January, 2021, two men named Scott Hall and Paul Maggio were escorted into the Coffee County Georgia elections office by one of the Georgia fraudulent electors (Cathy Latham) where they stole voting data from a voting machine at the direction of Sidney Powell. Thursday on Political Rewind: Yesterday, a federal appeals court allowed Georgia House Bill 481 to take effect immediately, restricting abortion access after around six weeks with few exceptions. In response to a subpoena filed by the plaintiffs, Coffee County attorneys turned over video this week that revealed footage of the elections office on January 7, 2021, when the county GOP Chairwoman Latham, election board member Eric Chaney and election director Misty Hampton were joined by Hall, Paul Maggio, chief operating officer An attorney for Cathy Latham, the former chair of the Coffee County Republican Party, filed a motion Friday joining Trump's efforts to bury a special purpose grand jury report that recommends more than a dozen people be indicted for their actions. border-radius: 6px; The board says the two did this to avoid being fired. Jacqueline Alemany and Alice Crites contributed to this report. She said she believed she was pushed out because she had made the video criticizing Dominion machines. The state board referred the findings to Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr (R) for potential civil penalties. EMAIL [email protected] CALL (404) 656-2871. WebRT @MuellerSheWrote: In January, 2021, two men named Scott Hall and Paul Maggio were escorted into the Coffee County Georgia elections office by one of the Georgia fraudulent electors (Cathy Latham) where they stole voting data from a voting machine at the direction of Sidney Powell. Cathy Latham, who was chair of the local Republican Party at the time, was also one of 16 pro-Trump fake electors who convened in the Georgia State Capitol on Dec. 14, 2020, despite Mr. Trumps loss in the state.
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