Expert finds signs of tampering on Georgia election server

A computer security expert said in an affidavit filed Thursday that he found evidence suggesting that Georgia’s election server had been tampered with in December 2014.

The discovery, made by Logan Lamb, followed his findings from August 2016, in which he ascertained that the server had been left exposed to the internet for six months, The Associated Press reports. The contents of the server were then quietly deleted in mid-2017, days after election integrity activists filed a lawsuit seeking an overhaul of Georgia’s election system.

Additionally, Lamb said in his statement that the server’s computer logs — which could have provided a better understanding of what had been tampered with or stolen — only go back to Nov. 10, 2016, two days after President Trump won the White House.

Lamb’s court filing is at odds with state officials, who say that they came across no evidence to suggest that the server had been hacked.

“I can think of no legitimate reason why records from that critical period of time should have been deleted,” Lamb said.

The plaintiffs in the lawsuit allege that state election officials intentionally destroyed evidence that could have shown unauthorized access to the state’s election server.

While Georgia will use new electronic voting machines in 2020, Coalition for Good Governance, one of the plaintiffs in the case, says that the new machines can still be tampered with. A 2019 National Academies of Sciences report said that the only secure voting solution were hand-marked ballots that were processed by scanners that leave a tangible paper trail.