State Election Contest Exemplar
FULTON COUNTY SUPERIOR COURT
VOTER 1,
Plaintiff,
v.
BRAD RAFFENSPERGER, in his official
capacity as Secretary of State of the State
of Georgia,
Defendant.
ELECTION CONTEST COMPLAINT
Introduction
1. Plaintiffs only seek one remedy: an honest vote, honestly counted, with lawful ballots. The means to achieve this remedy is equally simple: an independently confirmed, observed signature-match-check of the absentee ballot envelopes to the pre-ballot voter’s signature in the voter file, as required by law, a monitored hand recount to assure an accurate vote count, and audit of the poll books to confirm we have the same number of ballots as voters, and no more, nor no less.
2. As acknowledged by leading practitioners and procedural guidebooks, a re-canvass and audit necessarily includes an independently confirmed, independently observed signature-match-check of the absentee ballot envelopes to the voter file, a protective procedure also advised by independent, bi-partisan blue ribbon panels and Congressional commissions, such as the Best Practices manual coauthored by the Election Integrity Project and the guideline publications of the Congressionally commissioned, United States Election Assistance Commission.
3. Understanding this, the Secretary of State ordered both an audit and a recanvass at the time of ordering the recount.
4. Unfortunately, the counties failed to conduct either the audit or the recanvass, and no independently confirmed, observed signature-match-check occurred. Notably, the counties refused pre-election requests to have an observer present when the signatures were matched to confirm the signature-match-check conformed to the law.
5. Compounding this problem, the manual recount prevents observers from seeing the ballots being counted to such a degree that some monitors had to bring binoculars to try to see what was on the ballot being counted.
6. Indeed, this conforms to a larger pattern, as during a critical ballot counting time period in Fulton County, Republican Party observers were told they could go home because no more ballot counting would occur, but then ballots were surreptitiously counted in the dark of night.
7. This is not the way to gain the confidence in the vote counting process necessary for the country to have confidence in the coming certification of the vote for the Presidency of the most powerful, and democratically governed, nation on earth.
8. The remedy plaintiffs seek is simple: no certification of the election for the Presidential electors from Georgia unless and until the counties conduct an independently observed, monitored and confirmed signature match check of the absentee ballots, or if not granted, a declaration the election outcome is in do.
JURISDICTION AND VENUE
9. This Court has original jurisdiction and venue pursuant to 21-2-524, as the defendant resides in Fulton County. The office contested is for the electors for the Presidency of the United States. This action contests the Defendant’s certification and seeks to declare the election invalid, and that no certification of Presidential electors can occur for this election as the result of the election is in doubt for the reasons cited below.
PARTIES
10. Voter 1 is a citizen of Georgia, a qualified elector of the state, a registered voter, and voted in the November 3, 2o20, General Election. As an aggrieved elector, Voter 1 is qualified to contest the election.
11. Georgia’s Secretary of State is a defendant in his official capacity, the chief elections officer responsible for overseeing the conduct of Georgia’s elections, responsible for assuring the elections are conducted in a free, fair, and lawful manner, and is the official responsible for certifying the vote for the Presidential election in the state of Georgia. The Secretary of State certified the results for the Presidential electors on November 18, 2020.
12. Joe Biden was a candidate for the Presidency in the 2020 General Election in Georgia.
13. Jo Jorgensen was a candidate for the Presidency in the 2020 General Election in Georgia.
FACTS
14. The Democratic Party of Georgia agreed that absentee ballots pose the greatest risk of election fraud.
15. The prior President, and Georgian, Jimmy Carter also identified absentee ballots as the greatest risk of election fraud. According to the Carter Report, mail-in voting is “the largest source of potential voter fraud.” (Id.)
16. The New York Times identified absentee ballots as the greatest risk of election fraud, as reported by the New York Times: “Error and Fraud at Issue as Absentee Voting Rises.”
17. Absentee ballots are “more likely to be compromised” than ballots cast at the polling booth, with a norm of at least 2% of all such ballots being invalid.
18. Increasing the amount of absentee balloting “increases the potential for fraud” as fraud is “vastly more prevalent” in absentee balloting.
19. Indeed, voting by mail is “problematic enough that election experts say there have been multiple elections in which no one can say with confidence which candidate was the deserved winner.”
20. “There is a bipartisan consensus that voting by mail, whatever its impact, is more easily abused than other forms” of voting. The bipartisan commission under former President Carter concurred that “absentee ballots remain the largest source of potential voter fraud.”
21. A consensus of election experts concurred that absentee ballots posed the greatest risk of election fraud. As election experts agree: “all the evidence of stolen elections involves absentee ballots and the like.”
22. Many well-regarded commissions and groups of diverse political affiliation agree that “when election fraud occurs, it usually arises from absentee ballots.”
23. Federal jurists long recognized the fraud risks attendant absentee balloting.
24. International, universally recognized election integrity standards require the presence of observers for the processing of ballots, as a “necessary safeguard of the integrity and transparency of the election.” Indeed, “the legal framework must contain a provision for representatives nominated by parties and candidates contesting the election to observe all voting processes.”
25. As Constitutional Law Professor Jonathan Turley publicly explained, canvassing in public view is critical to testing the integrity of the vote: “It’s like not just being asked to guess the number of jellybeans in a jar, but you have to do it without actually seeing the jar. So in order to find systemic problems, you need access to the system…. I’ve been reading these complaints and these affidavits. I think it’s clear at this point that voting fraud occurred. There is obviously a record here of dead people voting. There are obviously problems of keeping observers in places where they really couldn’t observe, very effectively. We still don’t know. But we wouldn’t know — unless we had greater access to the system itself. That is held by election officials and that requires a court to order that information to be turned over.”
26. The sole safeguard in Georgia against absentee fraud is the signature of the absentee ballot envelope matching the signature of the voter in the voter file. Much like the signature on a bank check, it is all that protects an honest accounting of the vote. Yet, it is the one process counties will not allow any independent confirmation of, any audit review of, any monitored observation of at any stage of the process, any canvassing of, or any recanvassing of.
27. Despite a massive rise of mail-in ballots, Georgia reports the lowest rate of rejection of such ballots in its history, and a rate more than ten times lower than past Georgia elections.
28. Georgians repeatedly requested the Secretary of State, prior to certification, verify, in the presence of party-designated observers, the validity of the signature of any ballot received absentee or by mail. Despite repeated assurances such verification was forthcoming, and a public statement commanding canvassing and auditing of the vote, no such verification has in fact occurred as of this date.
29. The Secretary of States assured the public there would be a complete audit, recanvass and recount of the vote.
30. As the Congressionally created United States Election Assistance Commission provided in its guidelines, a critical part of any canvass of the vote must include allowing observers to check any possible "signature mismatches on absentee ballot envelopes or in the poll books."
31. In order for Georgia’s electors to be included in the Electoral College under the statutory safe harbor, the defendant must certify the election by December 8, 2020. Section 5 of Title 3 of the United States Code provides a safe-harbor for the adjudication of contested issues concerning any election for the appointment of electors that allows the Governor to certify the election and have their electors included in the Electoral College if that determination is made six days prior to the appointment of the electors. To fall within the safe-harbor, this requires adjudication by December 8, 2020, as the Electoral College meets on December 14, 2020.
32. In testing the voter signature systems, a news reporter found Nevada, which reportedly employs a system similar to some counties in Georgia, failed to spot a forged signature 8 out of 9 times in this election. Georgia also reported an unusual number of votes only for the President for just one candidate, as Biden received almost 99% of the over-votes in this election. This constituted a margin of votes more than five times larger than the reported margin of victory in the state for the Presidential election. In prior election contests in Georgia, this fact alone warranted an election contest, and discovery to determine whether it was the product of error. In the few cases monitors could observe, they saw perfectly marked ballots for Biden only that looked like computer generated produced absentee ballots.
33. The hand recount occurred without proper notice to the parties, without effective monitoring of the ballots cast in many counties, without any signature match check of any kind occurring under independently confirmed observation, and without even a hand recount being conducted in some counties. Despite public assurances that the ballots (all scanned) would be made available to the entire public for independent review, no such ballots were ever made so available.
34. Those counties that allowed effective monitoring of the hand recount turned up thousands of uncounted ballots for Donald Trump, revealed miscounts by elections staff incorrectly counting tens of thousands of ballots for Joe Biden, and revealed major glitches in the Dominion software program that tabulated ballots. In other states employing Dominion technology, glitches occurred that changed the outcome of elections, and shifted votes more than 100 times the norm for a hand recount, including hand recounts conducted in Michigan, New Hampshire and Connecticut.
35. In counties that strictly enforced personal identification and in counties that never processed mail in votes for Donald Trump, thousands of votes for Donald Trump were not counted.
36. Individually, these errors in signature matches, counting the ballots, and discarding legal ballots, more than 15,000 votes were either illegally cast or not legally tabulated, which is more than the margin of victory in this election with 5 million voters in the state of Georgia. Indeed, a properly enforced signature match itself would have excluded more than 15,000 ballots cast in this election, which is more than the margin of victory in the election, and is, by itself, sufficient to place the outcome in doubt to qualify this contest.
COUNT I: ELECTION CONTEST
37. As a blue-ribbon commission confirmed: “Foremost, properly conducted recounts assure candidates and the public that in a close election, there has been a fair examination of the procedures and an accurate count of all legally cast votes.” (Recount Principles & Best Practices, Citizens for Election Integrity, p.1 (2014).
38. Critically, any recount must employ a “consistency of methodology for all ballots recounted” and must provide for “participation of opposing parties to observe and challenge the interpretation of a voter’s intent” (Recount Principles & Best Practices, Citizens for Election Integrity p.4 (2014).Neither occurred here in the manual recount.
39. The failure to conduct signature matches allowed more than 15,000 illegal ballots to be included in the tabulation of the vote for this office, which is more than the margin of victory in this election.
40. The exclusion of monitors from the counting of ballots on Fulton County allowed more than 15,000 illegal votes to be included in the tabulation of the vote for this office, which is more than the margin of victory in this election.
41. The exclusion of monitors who could see the ballots being hand recounted allowed more than 15,000 illegal votes to be included in the tabulation of the vote for this office, which is more than the margin of victory in this election.
42. The failure of the counties to properly receive mail in ballots lawfully sent excluded more than 15,000 legal votes from being included in the tabulation of the vote for this office, which is more than the margin of victory in this election.
43. The failure of the counties to remove dead people, non-citizens, duplicate votes, and non-residents to vote in this election allowed more than 15,000 illegal votes to be included in the tabulation of the vote for this office, which is more than the margin of victory in this election.
44. The failure of the counties to conduct a proper election in accord with the best practices guidelines of the United States Election Assistance Commission allowed more than 15,000 illegal votes to be included in the tabulation of the vote for this office, which is more than the margin of victory in this election.
45. The Secretary of State failed his promise to the public, and no election results should be certified until he confirms the counties conducted the audit, recount, and recanvass, applying uniform standards and allowing meaningful monitoring of the process, as he publicly promised the citizens of Georgia, and the country, he would. "It will be an audit, a recount and a recanvass all at once." https://www.cbsnews.com/news/georgia-election-hand-recount-audit-presidential-race/
REMEDIES
46. Plaintiffs seek immediate discovery of all signature match files and immediate publication to the world of all scanned ballots, as the Secretary previously promised the public he would. If no review conducted, then Plaintiffs seek a declaration ...
