The Georgia Vote Machine Theft Poses a Direct Threat to the 2024 Election

When Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis filed her sweeping RICO indictment of Donald Trump and 18 alleged co-conspirators, many were surprised to learn of the audacious scheme by Trump’s allies to access and copy Dominion Voting System software in Coffee County, Georgia. Though the Washington Post first reported this plot in the summer of 2022, the Fulton County indictment brought the alleged voting software theft into focus, illustrated with stunning surveillance video. Scott Hall, who admitted on tape that he took part in the scheme, became the first to plead guilty late last month.

Records indicate, however, that this smaller theft was just part of a much larger, multistate plot that is ongoing. It is easy to see how it started in Coffee County. What’s harder to understand is why greater effort isn’t being made to figure out exactly where it has expanded since.

Systemic voter suppression has festered with impunity in Coffee County for generations. The arrest and aggressive yearslong persecution of Olivia Coley-Pearson—a Black woman who has worked to enfranchise voters who are unable to read—juxtaposed with the conspicuous lack of action into the Coffee theft by state law enforcement is a stark illustration of the bias and inequity in southern Georgia. These investigators aren’t racing to uncover the Trump allies’ plot, or invite federal inquiries.

The threat to voting systems across the nation is ongoing, though, because the operatives, allegedly hired and funded by Trump campaign–related attorneys, made copies of the software that runs the state’s voting machines. They then, it is alleged, covertly shared that data with a wide network of MAGA allies and election deniers. And because Georgia uses one statewide voting system, the same software taken from Coffee is used in Fulton, DeKalb, and every other county in the state. Furthermore, very similar software versions are used in other states.

According to records obtained in discovery by the Coalition for Good Governance in its long-standing lawsuit that first uncovered the breach, the software was uploaded and distributed to an unknown number of other individuals and entities across state lines and international borders. Documents also show that copies of the software were allegedly loaded onto drives and sent to Sidney Powell, who is under indictment in Fulton County for her alleged role in the plot, and to Stephanie Lambert Junttila, another attorney recently indicted for allegedly illegally possessing software and voting machines from both Dominion and ES&S systems in Michigan. How often this software has been copied, shared, recopied, and reshared can’t be known.

The stolen software scheme extends even further to a network of Trump allies and operatives implicated in efforts to obtain copies of voting system software in Colorado, Pennsylvania, and Ohio.

Simply put: Possessing copies of voting system software enables hackers, thieves, and even foreign governments to install it on their own computers, create replicas of the voting systems, probe them for weaknesses, and develop ways to exploit vulnerabilities. Having a copy of the voting software is a boon for malicious actors. An attacker could use it to fabricate evidence of stolen votes to advance disinformation or support election deniers who baselessly challenge election results. Even modestly trained high school students can decompile the software to get the source code, and use it to develop malware designed to be installed with minimal physical access to the voting equipment that could alter votes in future elections.

Press accounts of the Coffee County breach often downplay the importance of stealing election “data,” but election security experts have warned that the stolen voting software released “in the wild” puts future elections at risk. In fact, before the election system breaches were publicly known, Dominion stated that the distribution of its voting software to biased, partisan entities would cause “irreparable damage” to the “election security interests of the nation.” And Georgia’s chief information officer testified that if potential adversaries obtained voting system software, it would give them a “road map” to hack the system.

But since the breaches have come to light, Georgia officials are taking no precautions and don’t seem to be heeding the warnings. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger thoroughly dismissed the security threats posed by the software breach. A senior aide to the secretary doubled down when he told CNN that the breach didn’t pose any danger to the election system.

Consider this: If a laboratory were robbed of plutonium, we wouldn’t expect local law enforcement to apprehend only the burglars, and stop there. Federal law enforcement would investigate where the contraband has been distributed, who got it, and what they plan to do with it, prosecuting any criminal activity to protect the nation. There’s no evidence of any such investigation.

Progress happens when everyday people come together and get involved to demand justice and accountability. We are calling on people to come together and demand a federal investigation immediately into the voting system breaches in Georgia and other states. The theft of voting system software by partisan actors willing to disrupt or subvert elections poses a serious threat to our elections and national security.