VIDEO: Election officials in Coffee County, Ga., allegedly demonstrate how Dominion machines can switch votes, fill out blank ballots



Election officials from a small county in Georgia are arguing they can prove the much-maligned Dominion Voting Systems machines used in several battleground states during the 2020 election are fraught with security risks.

What are the details?

In a pair of videos posted on YouTube Wednesday, Coffee County elections supervisor Misty Martin appeared to demonstrate how, with relative ease, the machines can be used to wrongfully tabulate votes in a range of ways — such as to scan the same ballots multiple times, switch votes, or even fill out blank ballots.

"So there's my blank ballot that I want to adjudicate, and I'm going to vote for Doug Collins ... and I just counted that vote," Martin said on the video, showing other election officials how someone could allegedly scan a blank ballot into the system and then proceed to fill it out in adjudication.

Earlier in the recording, Martin showed how a batch of ballots could allegedly be scanned through the system and accepted more than once. She also demonstrated how an election worker could view a filled-out ballot in adjudication and, from there, switch votes from one candidate to another.

Dominion Voting Machine Flaws -- 2020 Election Coffee County, Georgia Video 1youtu.be

Dominion Voting Machine Flaws -- 2020 Election Coffee County, Georgia Video 2youtu.be

At one point, the camera was taken outside of Martin's office in order to demonstrate the perspective of a poll observer watching the process. The officials conclude that someone watching from that distance would not be able to adequately assess what was happening.

As the second video concludes, you can hear someone say, "It works fine for honest people ... those who intend to do wrong, though ... certainly can."

What else?

In the videos, election officials do not allege that widespread fraud occurred in Coffee County, rather they point to the potential for fraud in any county where the Dominion voting machines were used.

It should be noted that officials in the video appeared to be running tests with the ballots and not actually counting them toward 2020 election totals. Whether the system has the same security settings for tests and official counts was not immediately clear.

TheBlaze attempted to contact Martin several times for more information about the tests but has not yet received a reply.

Anything else?

Dominion has denied that any ballot manipulation occurred during the 2020 election. A spokesperson for the company, Michael Steel, told Fox News in November that it was "physically impossible" to switch votes on the machines. That statement would appear to be misleading if what Martin demonstrates in the video is true.

Steel also alleged that if any electronic interference occurred, it would be found out when cross-referenced with printed ballots.

Coffee County, as of Thursday, had refused to certify the results of its electronic recount. County officials claimed in a letter to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger that they could not certify the electronic recount numbers given their "inability to repeatably duplicate creditable election results."

Raffensperger has since launched an investigation into the county and certified the statewide results given the fact that the discrepancy of votes in the county was not large enough to change the outcome of the election.

Georgia secretary of state announces 250 investigations into ‘credible’ claims of fraud connected to the ​2020 election



Georgia's Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced during a press conference Monday that his office is currently investigating more than 250 claims of fraud related to the 2020 election.

"As we move forward in the process, we will, as we always have been, we will continue to investigate credible claims of illegal voting and violation of state election law," the secretary of state told reporters at the state capitol building. "There are currently over 250 open cases from 2020 and we have 23 investigators to follow up on that. Some of these include, a charge Gwinnett County that absentee ballots outnumber absentee envelopes. This is the kind of specific charge that our office can investigate and ascertain the truth."

"We have multiple investigations underway surrounding absentee ballots in Fulton, Gwinnett, Cobb, and many others. We continue our investigations into potential dead, double voters, and non-resident voters," he continued. "As we move to the December 1 election, which is tomorrow, and the January 5 federal runoffs, we have to remain vigilant."

Even as the secretary of state announced the investigations, he again defended the security of the election, complaining that "dishonest actors" have been spreading "massive amounts of misinformation."

In what appeared to be an indirect reference to President Trump's legal team, Raffensperger noted, "There are those who are exploiting the emotions of many Trump supporters with fantastic claims, half truths, misinformation, and frankly, they are misleading the president as well."

The secretary of state's office in Georgia has maintained that there has been no evidence of widespread election fraud in the state. Georgia's statewide voting implementation manager, Gabriel Sterling, said Tuesday that officials do not expect any of the investigations will result in the overturning of the election.

Democratic nominee Joe Biden currently leads Trump by just under 13,000 votes in the state, and last week Raffensperger officially certified the election results, declaring Biden the winner of the state's 16 Electoral College votes.

The Trump campaign has not conceded the state, however, but instead requested that another recount be conducted. That recount is currently under way and is expected to be completed by Wednesday.

During another press conference Tuesday, a frustrated Raffensperger informed reporters that Fulton County, home to Atlanta, is to blame for delays in the recounting process. He said election workers in the county continue to make decisions that are "concerning" and said it appears the county wants to make it a "dramatic finish," turning in results just in time for the deadline.

Further raising suspicion, on Monday, news broke that a Dominion voting machine server crashed in the county for an unspecified reason.

Judge orders Georgia officials not to 'erase' data from Dominion voting machines in 3 counties



A federal judge on Sunday barred state officials in Georgia from wiping Dominion voting machines in three Atlanta-area counties after Republicans electors filed an emergency motion seeking their inspection.

What are the details?

U.S. District Judge Timothy Batten Sr.'s order — which applies to voting machines in Cobb, Gwinnett, and Cherokee counties — came about after pro-Trump attorney Sidney Powell filed a lawsuit in the state alleging the machines were manipulated to procure an election victory for Democratic nominee Joe Biden.

Plaintiffs in the case, including conservative teen pundit C.J. Pearson, are seeking an order to allow them to forensically inspect the machines for evidence of fraud.

"Defendants are hereby enjoined and restrained from altering, destroying, or erasing, or allowing the alteration, destruction, or erasure of, any software or data on any Dominion voting machine in Cobb, Gwinnett, and Cherokee Counties," the order stated. "This temporary restraining order shall remain in effect for ten days, or until further order of the Court, whichever comes first."

Batten also ordered the group of defendants, which includes Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R), to "file a brief setting forth in detail the factual bases they have, if any, against allowing" forensic inspections of the machines in the three counties. They have until Wednesday to do so.

According to the order, in a hearing on Sunday, state officials demonstrated opposition to a forensic inspection of the machines and argued they don't have the authority to instruct county officials on the matter.

What else?

In their emergency motion filed on Friday, plaintiffs argued that the vote count certified by Georgia officials last week, which declared Biden the winner of the state's 16 electoral votes over President Donald Trump, is "wrong."

"Tens of thousands of votes counted toward Vice President Biden's final tally were the product of illegality, and physical and computer-based fraud leading to 'outright ballot stuffing,'" they stated.

"Georgia's election process depends entirely on voting machines, tabulators and software purchased from Dominion Voting Systems Corporation that was compromised. Computerized vote recording and tabulations are controlled by software programs that were designed to cheat, and which were open to human manipulation," the motion continued.

Batten noted in his order that the defendants argued "allowing such forensic inspections would pose substantial security and proprietary/trade secret risks."

Anything else?

On the same day that Batten issued the order, a machine recount in Georgia requested by the Trump campaign was forced to stop when a server maintained by Dominion crashed in Fulton County.

Election officials said the crash was due to an unspecified problem but maintained that Dominion technicians had been dispatched to resolve the issue.

The current tally in the state shows Trump trailing Biden but just under 13,000 votes, or a margin of 0.2%.

Dominion voting machine server crash causes delay in Georgia recount



The third count of presidential votes in Georgia hit a snag Sunday when a server maintained by Dominion voting machines — which have become a point of controversy — crashed in Fulton County after about 88% of the votes had been recounted. Officials in Georgia say that the count will resume on Monday morning and expect the recount to be completed by the deadline of Dec. 2.

Everything that happens with Dominion voting machines has become the subject of intense scrutiny after glitches in Michigan appeared to reverse the totals in initial reporting between President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden. Many conservatives on social media — including the president and his legal team — have cast doubt on the security of the machines.

According to Fox News, election officials notified the outlet of the unspecified problem with a newly deployed mobile server on Sunday night and indicated that technicians had been dispatched to resolve the issue.

The current tally in Georgia shows President Trump trailing Biden by about 13,000 votes, but the Trump legal team has challenged the results and has sharply criticized Republican Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger for failing to do enough to challenge the results of the election, which Raffensperger in particular has strongly stood behind. The Trump campaign has additionally requested (and obtained) multiple recounts of the results in Georgia. The campaign claims that the previous recount's failure to include signature matching (which the state says is now impossible since envelopes have been discarded per usual procedure when ballots are opened) renders the results of these recounts suspect.

Dominion has aggressively denied that its machines either were or have been tampered with in Georgia or any other state. The company has also encouraged workers to work from home and to hide their social media profiles because they claim that their workers have been subjected to "persistent harassment and threats against personal safety" due to the scrutiny of the election results.

Last week, a spokesman for Dominion stated that it was "physically impossible" to alter votes in the Dominion system and noted that whenever someone casts a vote on a Dominion machine, it produces a paper receipt that is kept by the county. "If any electronic interference had taken place, the tally reported electronically would not match the printed ballots, and in every case where we've looked at — in Georgia, all across the country — the printed ballot, the gold standard in election security, has matched the electronic tally," the spokesman said.

Stacey Abrams coaching Hollywood elites to help Democrats win Georgia runoffs, selling pricey tickets for virtual concert



Democrats are pulling out all of the stops in an effort to win the critical Senate runoffs in Georgia. Failed Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams is attempting to use the power of Hollywood to help sway voters in Georgia.

Starting on Nov. 27, Abrams will hold a weekly briefing "specifically for Hollywood agents, managers, publicists and entertainment execs for how they can best help" in Georgia's Senate runoff races, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

"I believe very much in the power of celebrity to cut through the noise of politics," Abrams said while promoting her movie "All In: The Fight for Democracy" on Nov. 18. "Whether it was in Georgia or in Michigan or Wisconsin, Arizona, or Nevada — states that faced aggressive voter suppression in 2016, 2018 — it was absolutely an important moment when they heard someone they saw not as a politician, which is an easy community to be suspect of, but those that they trusted as part of the way they think about how they organize their lives. It does indeed matter."

Abrams, who lost in 2018 to Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, has never conceded her campaign loss, and blames her defeat on voter suppression.

Abrams is also planning a virtual concert to raise money for her Fair Fight PAC, an initiative "dedicated to funding, training, and supporting voter protection teams in battleground states across the country." The "Rock the Runoff" virtual concert will be held on Dec. 3, and include musical acts such as John Legend, Common, Earthgang, Ben Gibbard of Death Cab For Cutie, and Indigo Girls. Tickets to the virtual concert range from $5 to a pricey $25,000 ticket that includes "pre-event reception with Stacey Abrams and a signed thank you note with lapel pin."

Fair Fight PAC, which was founded by Abrams in 2018 after losing the election, used celebrities in videos to raise funds for the 2020 election. Fair Fight PAC enlisted celebrities such as Selena Gomez, Steph Curry. Yara Shahidi, Issa Rae, and Keke Palmer.

In the same THR report, Black Voters Matter co-founder LaTosha Brown said there's a "new South that's rising" because of film production in Georgia.

"We're trying to tell people not to write Georgia off, that Georgia is on the map," Brown told the Hollywood Reporter. "We've seen this transition — Georgia is the number one place for film productions, so this city has become more internationalized, I think one. I think it's been attractive to bringing diverse folks to the state. There's a new South that's rising with the growing presence of the film and entertainment industry."

"Many of the celebrities and Hollywood folks have been coming to us really being very transparent about not knowing what to do and asking us what they could do to help the work that's on the ground. That's been very refreshing because I've seen in other years where I felt people were doing it just to build their brand," Brown continued. "What I've been seeing is across the board, there have been people all throughout the industry that have been stepping up and I do think that that has made a difference."

Celebrities such as Kumail Nanjiani, Sophia Bush, and Jaden Smith are co-founders of Win Both Seats, an organization supporting the Democratic Senate candidates in Georgia.

Other entertainers who have donated to the Democrats' Georgia Federal Election Committee or the two Democratic Senate runoff candidates include George Clooney, Will Smith, Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Joaquin Phoenix, Jason Bateman, Mandy Moore, Patricia Arquette and Bradley Whitford, according to The Hill.

The Georgia Senate runoffs take place on Jan. 5, and will pit incumbent Kelly Loeffler (R) against candidate Raphael Warnock (D), as well as incumbent David Perdue (R) versus candidate Jon Ossoff (D). If Warnock and Ossoff both win, Democrats would then notch a 50-50 tie in the Senate, and the vice president would serve as the tiebreaker.

Georgia GOP chair says a monitor caught a 9,626-vote error during DeKalb County hand count audit process, got it fixed before it was filed



The chairman of the Georgia Republican Party said Wednesday that hand counters in the Peach State almost submitted a 9,626-vote error as part of the state's audit process, but thankfully the error was spotted by an election monitor before it was entered.

"One of our monitors discovered a 9,626 vote error in the DeKalb County hand count," Chairman David Shafer tweeted Wednesday morning. "One batch was labeled 10,707 for Biden and 13 for Trump — an improbable margin even by DeKalb standards. The actual count for the batch was 1,081 for Biden and 13 for Trump."

Shafer added that "had this counting error not been discovered, Biden would have gained enough votes from this one batch alone to cancel out Trump's gains from Fayette, Floyd, and Walton."

"Our attorneys have turned over an affidavit from our monitor to the Secretary of State and requested an investigation," he confirmed in a subsequent tweet.

Every county in Georgia has been undergoing a hand recount of ballots cast in the Nov. 3 election after the initial tabulation showed Democratic nominee Joe Biden edging President Trump in the state by a margin of just over 14,000 votes.

Already in the hand count, more than 5,000 missing votes from Fayette, Floyd, and Walton counties have been discovered. With those votes being added, Trump has trimmed Biden's lead in Georgia to under 13,000 votes. However, despite the errors in those counties, the state is not expected to flip to Trump after the recount process is finished and the results are certified this week.

But Shafer is concerned that the recent error may be just one of many. In a pair of additional tweets, the GOP party chairman explained, "We were limited to 1 monitor for every 10 counting tables and we were kept some distance from the tables. There is no telling what we missed under these unreasonable restrictions. The miscounted batch had been be signed off by two official counters."

"Biden's margin of victory in this batch of votes (99.9%) bested Bashar al-Assad's 2007 margin (97.6%) and Raul Castro's 2008 margin (99.4%). It matched Kim Jong-il's 2009 margin (99.9%)," he went on, pointing out that Biden's erroneous margin of victory in the batch was akin to that of rulers in totalitarian states.

Addressing the issue on a call with reporters Wednesday, Georgia's voting implementations manager Gabriel Sterling said that he was aware of the error and thanked the monitor for catching it, but ultimately called it a "non-issue." Sterling argued that the error would have been discovered even without the monitor's help because of quality control measures the state has in place.

It should be noted that the audit process currently under way in the state is not the same as an official recount, which may soon be requested by the Trump campaign once the results are certified.

The president has complained about the current audit process, calling it a "joke" due to the fact that "signature matching" is not being done. However, election officials in Georgia have insisted that signature matching was already performed during the initial count and cannot be performed again.

The Georgia recount is a joke and is being done UNDER PROTEST. Even though thousands of fraudulent votes have been… https://t.co/pWIpmh6wO6
— Donald J. Trump (@Donald J. Trump)1605709911.0

Georgia GOP chairman: Why did absentee ballot rejection rate drastically drop in 2020 when a million more of them were cast than in 2018?



As the state of Georgia braces for a hand recount of votes from the disputed 2020 presidential election, Georgia's Republican chairman has a question:

In 2018, when 230,000 absentee ballots were cast, 3.5% were rejected for signature mismatches or other reasons. In… https://t.co/ZvwBhHxezX
— David Shafer (@David Shafer)1605236105.0

"In 2018, when 230,000 absentee ballots were cast, 3.5% were rejected for signature mismatches or other reasons," David Shafer noted Thursday night on Twitter. "In 2020, when more than 1.2 million absentee ballots were cast, the rejection rate fell to 0.3%. Did the massive increase in ballots overwhelm the verification process?"

What do the numbers mean?

Shafer's numbers indicate the rejection rate dropped a whopping 2.2% this year compared to 2018. You remember 2018, don't you? When there was no coronavirus making it too dangerous to vote in person, as many Democratic officials claimed this year — although mass protests and riots were just fine.

Given Shafer's numbers, let's say the absentee ballot rejection rate in Georgia remained at 3.5% this year. That would mean about 42,000 of the 1.2 million cast in 2020 would have been rejected. But with a 2020 rejection rate of just 0.3%, the number of rejected absentee ballots instead was around 3,600, using Shafer's numbers.

According to NBC News, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden led President Donald Trump in Georgia on Friday afternoon by a vote count of 2,472,152 to 2,458,002 — a difference of just 14,150 votes.

Seems an expectation of about 42,000 rejected ballots this year would make quite the difference in Georgia's presidential vote outcome — even half that number theoretically would move Trump past Biden at present.

Now what?

Shafer and U.S. Rep. Doug Collins (R-Georgia) on Tuesday raised several concerns with Georgia's Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, also a Republican, about the recount. Trump chose Collins to lead his Georgia recount team.

In the pair's letter, a number of requests were made based on concerns about training and directives for the hand count — and one notes that the recount process doesn't include a review of signatures on absentee ballot applications and ballot envelopes to confirm their validity.

"This raises serous concerns as to whether the counties properly conducted signature verification and/or other scrutiny of absentee ballots," the letter says. "In fact it presents the issue of whether some counties conducted any scrutiny at all."

The letter asks Raffensperger to make sure that signature verification happens in the recount: "We do not believe it is possible to certify the results of the 2020 General Election without conducting this investigation and analysis."

In addition:

  • They also have concerns that there can be only one review for every 10 audit teams, which they said makes it impossible to monitor the recount in real time.
  • The letter also said it's improper to certify the election results by 5 p.m. Friday when the audit and recount won't be completed by that time.
  • Also they requested that the start of the recount, which was to commence Friday, be delayed until Monday so that interested parties can have sufficient notice of the audit locations.
  • Finally they said parameters for ballot security were not explained with any detail.

Raffensperger's office on Friday didn't immediately reply to TheBlaze's request for comment regarding if he will consider any of the requests in the letter from Shafer and Collins.

Georgia secretary of state announces statewide hand recount of presidential election



The state of Georgia will begin a full hand recount of the presidential election results, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced Wednesday.

Speaking at a news conference, Raffensperger said the recount will be completed by Nov. 20 and will be an audit, recount, and recanvass all in one, WSB-TV reported.

"With the margin being so close, it will require a full, by-hand recount in each county," Raffensperger said Wednesday morning. "This will help build confidence. It will be an audit, a recount and a recanvass all at once. It will be a heavy lift but we will work with the counties to get this done in time for our state certification."

Former Vice President Joe Biden leads President Donald Trump in Georgia by 14,111 votes. The presidential race has not yet been certified as prominent Republicans have blasted the state secretary of state for "failures" in the election process.

"There have been too many failures in Georgia elections this year and the most recent election has shined a national light on the problems," Georgia Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue said in a joint statement. "The Secretary of State has failed to deliver honest and transparent elections. He has failed the people of Georgia, and he should step down immediately."

Controversies abound in several counties in Georgia where election chicanery is alleged. State officials are adamant that reports of widespread voter fraud are either misinformation or misunderstandings.

"A few items that happened over the weekend that for lack of a better word are different terminologies — 'fake news,' disinformation, misinformation, misunderstandings — and all those things that are feeding into the situation we see not just in Georgia, but across the country," Georgia's voting system implementation manager Gabriel Sterling told WAGA-TV. "The facts are the facts, regardless of outcomes."

In Spalding County, a viral video on social media claimed to show absentee ballots found discarded in a dumpster. Sterling said the video was false.

"There were no ballots there. We sent investigators down. What they found was empty security envelopes. So, there was nothing there that affected the outcome of the election," he explained.

Ballot counting delays in Gwinnett County were the result of a software malfunction that forced several thousand mail-in absentee ballots to be re-adjudicated before the results could be tabulated, county officials told TheBlaze. The adjudication process requires one Republican, one Democrat, and a nonpartisan elections officials to review each handwritten ballot that's unable to be scanned by the voting machine because of an error with how it was filed out, leaving no room for either party to illegally change ballots.

In Fulton County, county officials denied allegations that Trump campaign election observers were told on election night that ballot counting at State Farm Arena would end at 10:30 p.m., only to continue "counting ballots in secret until 1:00 a.m." A spokesperson for the county said "no one from the staff spoke to anyone observing the process to inform them that things were done for the night." Additionally, an election observer from the secretary of state's office was present while the votes were processed.

Secretary of State Raffensperger pledged to provide fair and accurate election results while thoroughly investigating any claims of voting irregularities.

"My office will continue to investigate each and every incidence of illegal voting. Double voting, felon voting, people voting out of state — if you report it we will investigate it. Every legal vote will count," Raffensperger said.

"We haven't found any widespread fraud. We will investigate every single case that voters bring to us," he added.