The Jenny Beth Show

Election Lawsuits, Voting Machines, & Sanctity of the Ballot | Garland Favorito, Co-Founder VoterGA

Episode Summary

Garland Favorito is the Co-Founder of VoterGA and his challenges to election procedures in the state of Georgia have paved the way for real election integrity. Jenny Beth sat down to talk to Garland about some of the lawsuits he has filed and the impact they have had on election processes in Georgia and beyond.

Episode Notes

Garland Favorito is the Co-Founder of VoterGA and his challenges to election procedures in the state of Georgia have paved the way for real election integrity. Jenny Beth sat down to talk to Garland about some of the lawsuits he has filed and the impact they have had on election processes in Georgia and beyond.

Twitter: @VoterGA | @jennybethm

Episode Transcription

Garland Favorito (00:00:00):

It's about the, uh, the elections. It's a political hot potato. The judges are afraid to expose the evidence that will show that American election systems are just a facade. We're, we're not conducting legitimate elections.

Narrator (00:00:15):

Keeping our republic is on the line, and it requires Patriots with great passion, dedication, and eternal vigilance to preserve our freedoms. Jenny Beth Martin is the co-founder of Tea Party Patriots. She's an author, a filmmaker, and one of time magazine's most influential people in the world. But the title she is most proud of is Mom To Her Boy, girl Twins. She has been at the forefront fighting to protect America's core principles for more than a decade. Welcome to the Jenny Beth Show.

Jenny Beth Martin (00:00:47):

In today's episode, I wanna dive a bit deeper into election integrity. Perhaps you're someone who has questions about the 2020 elections or even what happened in 2022. The problem is you can't talk about that. You can't even ask questions. Every aspect of our elections is above board. Don't you know that, Elise? That's where the talking heads and the media want you to think. My next guest is not afraid to ask questions. In fact, he takes some of his very important questions to the court of law. Garland FTO is the co-founder of voter ga, and he's responsible for some of the most important lawsuits in the country dealing with election integrity. We discuss those in this episode. If you're skeptical about the election process and have lost all hope that our elections still have, meaning, you need to hear this episode. Well, Garland, thank you so much for joining me today. You've been involved in election integrity for a very long time, and we have some important things to talk about that are happening in Georgia. The Mitre report, the Halderman Report, the Secretary of State's response to these reports. But what are all these reports and where did they come from?

Garland Favorito (00:02:01):

Well, they actually came, uh, from a case gene that was called Curling v Raff Asperger. And, uh, that was a case that was very interesting. They, uh, originally where the, the plaintiffs followed it to challenge the old paperless, uh, direct recording electronic system that was installed in 2002. And that was the one that I claimed back then was, uh, unconstitutional because it, uh, did not produce a verifiable votes for the voter and audit, couldn't no audit procedures for the elections officials, and it couldn't recount a race. It just reprinted previously unverifiable results. So, uh, fast forward to 2019, the Judge, judge Totenberg, in that case rule that, uh, the, that old system was in fact unconstitutional, which is what I had said back in 2002. We had, um, lost our case in the Georgia Supreme Court. They blew us off at the very same time that the United States District Court says is yes, no, you were correct.

(00:03:03):

So, so that's how this case started. So once the, um, once the plaintiffs or the petitioners we call them, got that victory, they then, uh, turned around and ended up suing again because the legislature mandated ballot marking device systems. And, uh, secretary Ensberg turned around and bought a QR coded voting system that is as unverifiable as the one he had before. And he did that over our objections. We tried to explain to him, uh, you know, before that, that type of a system is not good and that many vendors have different types of systems, including Dominion, that could be, uh, more verifiable to the voter. So nevertheless, he did buy that system. And then, uh, the curling plaintiffs filed, uh, uh, again, another amended motion to challenge that system, uh, in, in the same lawsuit. And that's, that is the lawsuit in which the Halderman report and the MA report and many, many other, uh, expert witnesses have, um, done declarations for. Um, so it's, it's an incredibly long-running case. Judge Totenberg has actually looked at probably the most comprehensive set of evidence ever in, uh, certainly in electronic voting case in Georgia, but maybe in any election case in, in the state of Georgia. So, um, that's, uh, pretty much that was the, the genesis of where all these reports came from. The Haldeman report was sealed.

Jenny Beth Martin (00:04:37):

Okay, hold on one sec before we get into this, the sealed report. Let's take a step back. There are gonna be people who are listening to this podcast and watching the video of it who are not from Georgia and don't know how Georgia votes. So in Georgia, um, we vote statewide with the same system. Every single county, every single precinct in the entire state,

Garland Favorito (00:04:59):

Correct? That's right. Uh, and Georgia is one of only two states, to my knowledge, that vote uses the same equipment statewide. It's mandated to use this type of equipment. The counties have leeway in what, how much of that system they use, but they're not, uh, able to buy a competitive system. So Georgia and South Carolina, I believe, are the only two states that actually use the same, uh, system statewide. And ironically, they are both QR coded voting systems, although South Carolina is made, uh, by E S N S and Georgia's is made by Dominion.

Jenny Beth Martin (00:05:33):

And in Georgia back after, um, Bush v Gore, sometime shortly after that election in 2000, the state legislature changed. And that's where we wound up with the same ballot, or not ballot marking devices, but the esteem voting equipment ca, ca statewide, no matter what was sometime after that case. Correct?

Garland Favorito (00:05:57):

That's right. That was, that was when they, they passed, uh, that law originally. And ironically, they had to modify the law back in 2002 because at that time it required an independent audit trail of each vote cast, which the vote the system was back in 2002 did not have at least the ones that, most of the ones that they evaluated and the one that they purchased.

Jenny Beth Martin (00:06:18):

Right. And back then, in 2002, all the way up until, what, 2019? So even in the 2018 election, you would go into vote in Georgia, you would tell someone who you are, they would check your name and your ID off a list, and then you'd go to the, the voting booth, you'd touch the screen and you'd press a button that said cast ballot, and then you were done. And you had, you had no idea how, how it was so bizarre. And you used to program computers, right?

Garland Favorito (00:06:53):

Yes. I'm a career IT professional. I've in the business for over 40 years. And, and I've spent about 20 years in, in, in voting systems, uh, along those times. 'cause that was, that was, uh, voluntary part-time work.

Jenny Beth Martin (00:07:06):

And then I used to program computers as well. So when we first met, we actually met on John Frederick's radio show after the 2020 election we were in on that show together. Um, but I, I get embarrassed to say this, but I'm at least honest enough to admit that I, I should have been more engaged in the computer systems that we were using in Georgia prior to the 2020 election. 'cause I, when I would press that cast ballot Yeah. I knew something was wrong too. Not necessarily. What he knew is that you had no way to know whether what it was counting was real or not. Yeah.

Garland Favorito (00:07:47):

Well, you've been pretty engaged in Georgia for a long, long time. I think actually we've met a couple of times even before 2020. Uh, 'cause you've always been pretty active here, so.

Jenny Beth Martin (00:07:56):

Well, yes, I have, but I should have been more active on these voting, the voting systems, and I'm so glad that you and others, others were engaged. So then the curling, the curling v Raff Asperger case, is that what wound up pushing us to the new system that is now dominion that we're,

Garland Favorito (00:08:13):

We're using? Exactly, exactly. It was that case that, that, that did it. And there's actually two sets of plaintiffs. They're what we call the curling plaintiffs and the coalition plaintiffs, but they both are, are, uh, trying to achieve the same things with verifiable voting for the, for the state election.

Jenny Beth Martin (00:08:28):

And that is a worthy goal no matter which side of the political aisle you're on.

Garland Favorito (00:08:33):

And we, we have been supporting that as well. One of our co-founder at Voter GA Ricardo Davis is a, is a, a petitioner in that case.

Jenny Beth Martin (00:08:40):

Wow. That's very good. Okay. So that's, that's a little bit of history. And even today, when you go to vote in Georgia, let's just break it down very simply for people. For how, how do you vote in Georgia? Explain, explain that to someone. Sure. Because they, people can vote a lot of different ways in this country. Yeah, yeah.

Garland Favorito (00:08:57):

Everybody, it's all different. Um, every state. So Georgia has, uh, several different ways to vote. You have the mail-in voting, you have early voting, uh, in person, and then you have the election day voting, uh, and the, uh, early voting and the election day voting used the same type of, of computer that we're talking about the, uh, touchscreen system with the QR coded vote that accumulate, that system accumulates your votes that are in the QR code that you, the voter cannot verify, which has been our issue since before they purchased the system. The mail-in, uh, side of that does not have a QR code that has your normal full ballot that you would see. And, and, and you're probably used to most, most states use. And then it actually uses, uh, what we call mark sense technology to read the, uh, where the marks are and have been marketing for each candidate. And then it, uh, accumulates the votes based on the actual mark that was made by the voter,

Jenny Beth Martin (00:09:56):

Which is kind of like Scantron, right? It's not exactly Scantron, but it's the same, like we, we all grew up with, um, s sat t tests Yeah. With SATs and, and standardized testing. So where you Yes. Circle in the bubble and it's counting as circled in bubble

Garland Favorito (00:10:12):

Identical concept.

Jenny Beth Martin (00:10:14):

Um, okay. And then one more thing, let me just highlight this. So you go in in person and you tell them who you, you are, and they check your id, and then they send you to a machine and explain what the ballot marking device is, and then that it prints out.

Garland Favorito (00:10:32):

Yes. So when you check in with the public books, you get, uh, what we call a smart card or a voter access card. It's a little, uh, it looks like a credit card. And then you take that over to the ballot marking device, which is a touch screen, and you insert that, and that card will allow you to cast one and only one vote on that, uh, ballot marking device. And in Georgia, then you, that ballot marking device, you'll, you'll say ca print, it will print, uh, what they, we call it a selection summary. It, we don't call this a really a, a ballot because it has a QR code and it has your selections on it, but it doesn't have the people you didn't, uh, vote for. And it doesn't have the referendum language on it. So, or that's why we don't consider it to be a real ballot.

(00:11:20):

So once you print that out, it's very difficult to verify that. And, and the studies show that, you know, 80% of people don't even verify their ballots once they print it out. So if the system printed incorrect information, uh, on the ballot, you, you may not catch it, or if it displayed incorrect information to you, uh, you may not catch that, uh, either. In fact, it would be no way you would catch it if they, if it failed to display a race, that kind of thing. But from that point in time on, you take that selection summary, and then you walk it over to the scanner, you insert the selection summary into the scanner, and then, uh, that is how you cast your, your vote in Georgia.

Jenny Beth Martin (00:12:00):

Okay. So, um, I, I hope that makes it very clear, and we probably can pull some footage so that, um, we, we show a little bit more of what the devices look like. I think we've got that from some of the training that mm-hmm. that we have for poll watchers and poll workers that we might be able to show on the screen. Okay. So now people understand how to vote in Georgia, and they understand the history of the, the lawsuit. Who is Halderman and what is Mitre and what are these reports?

Garland Favorito (00:12:30):

Okay. So, uh, Dr. Haldeman is a, um, uh, computer science professor from the University of Michigan, and, uh, expert witness in the case. Um, he's already made several declarations in the case, as many other experts have. But probably the most interesting thing about, uh, about him is that when he was a student at Princeton University, he was on the team for, of Dr. Ed Feltons. And Dr. Felton hacked the old Debo voting machines that we had in front of the United States Congress and the, uh, committee for House administration. Uh, it's quite a famous video. That was in 2006, I believe, in September. Uh, so that's, that's his background. So he's been in a long time, he's very well known in the, in the election integrity movement, um, and is highly qualified to be able to produce the report that he produced.

Jenny Beth Martin (00:13:22):

And we still use that system for 13 more years after Congress knew then it was hackable.

Garland Favorito (00:13:28):

Yes. Thank you for pointing that out.

Jenny Beth Martin (00:13:30):

Okay. So he's a computer science professor at the University of Michigan.

Garland Favorito (00:13:36):

That's

Jenny Beth Martin (00:13:36):

Right. And he was called on as an expert witness. That's right. In this case. And it's worth noting that the people who filed the curling report and the coalition report are not Republicans,

Garland Favorito (00:13:46):

Right? That's right. For the vast majority of them are actually Democrats. Uh, you know, our, our, uh, uh, plaintiff, uh, Ricardo is Davis is in the Constitution Party. He's the chair of the Constitution Party. Um,

Jenny Beth Martin (00:13:57):

Which you are in the party, that party as well. Yeah.

Garland Favorito (00:14:00):

And yes, but most of the others are, are actually are Democrats.

Jenny Beth Martin (00:14:06):

And I think that's worth noting, just so that people who are listening to this understand that in Georgia, I, I feel pretty confident in seeing Republicans and Democrats are concerned about the integrity and security of our voting systems.

Garland Favorito (00:14:20):

Absolutely. In fact, most as when we founded Voter J back in 2006, uh, most of our members tended to be, uh, Democrats who believed that they were cheat cheated in the 2002 election. And, uh, over time, we gained, added more Republicans who, particularly from the grassroots, they felt they were cheated by the establishment in primaries. And of course, we picked up a lot of libertarians along the way. And then in 2020, the, uh, Republicans really woke up and everything exploded when they, uh, felt that, you know, Donald Trump was treated, cheated out of the electoral votes in several different states, including Georgia.

Jenny Beth Martin (00:14:59):

And so Halderman was selected, um, by the plaintiffs. Was he selected by the plaintiffs to give the report or Yes. Or the court, so he was selected by the plaintiffs to give a report Yeah. About his concerns, about specifically the QR code coded Yes. Selection papers.

Garland Favorito (00:15:18):

And the important thing there is that he was able to get access to the system and test it for 12 weeks, I believe it was, um, as part of that court case.

Jenny Beth Martin (00:15:27):

And has anyone else outside of the Secretary of State or election offices are that you are aware of, been allowed to, to u like, have that kind of 12 weeks of access to the computer

Garland Favorito (00:15:40):

System? Not

Jenny Beth Martin (00:15:40):

In Georgia. In Georgia, yeah. Okay.

Garland Favorito (00:15:41):

Not in Georgia.

Jenny Beth Martin (00:15:42):

Um, and then, so he filed a report, and I interrupted you a few minutes ago, you were saying that it was recently unsealed?

Garland Favorito (00:15:50):

Oh, yes. Uh, so the report, uh, was actually sealed for, uh, uh, two years. And, uh, that, um, we've, many people have asked for that report to be unsealed, including Dr. Holleman, because he believes that the system poses a security risk nationwide. But as a result of, uh, quite a few, uh, lawsuits, um, you know, uh, O a n one American News, Fox News, a variety of folks have requested that report to be on SEAL for their own cases. But probably most importantly, the Secretary of State of Louisiana wanted, wanted a report to unsealed so he could secure the elections in the state of Louisiana, because they have a lot of dominion voting systems there. Uh, but nevertheless, the report, uh, remained sealed. Uh, now Judge Thunberg says that she, she kept it sealed because it was part of discovery, and it had not been used, uh, in motion. So as a result of the fact that motions had been filed referencing the report, she felt that it was appropriate then now to release the report publicly. And that's what triggered the release of it in, uh, the last, uh, couple of

Jenny Beth Martin (00:17:03):

Weeks. And, and she had it sealed. But why did she normally, maybe the evidence wouldn't be sealed. Was it asked to be sealed in this particular case? Like, did the, the defendant ask for it to be sealed, do you know?

Garland Favorito (00:17:17):

Uh, that's a really good question. I don't think I know the answer to that. I think that she took it upon herself to seal that. Um, as far as I know, I don't, I don't know if it's possible that the defendants asked for it to be sealed. Uh, I, I know that the plaintiffs did not.

Jenny Beth Martin (00:17:34):

Okay. And, and if she did, and she either for what, whatever reason, she, she had it sealed. So it, now she has released it, was it her who released it or an a higher court?

Garland Favorito (00:17:47):

No, she, she chose to release it because of the motions that were filed in her case. Okay. Um, that she felt that, okay, now that there are motions filed on it, and the motions are public, and then all evidence were in relationship to those motions should be made public. And that's when she decided to, um, to unseal it. Prior to that, there was just reports that were in discovery, part of discovery.

Jenny Beth Martin (00:18:12):

Okay. And then the Mitre report, what is that?

Garland Favorito (00:18:17):

The MITRE report, uh, is interesting. It was a counter report that, uh, that, uh, secretary Ensberg has referenced to, um, attack the Halderman report. So it would probably be good to talk about the Halderman report and what it found first, and then why the Mighty Report. Okay. Why the secretary wants to, to, uh, a, a attack that report.

Jenny Beth Martin (00:18:40):

So what did the Halderman report reveal? ?

Garland Favorito (00:18:44):

Well, actually, it revealed, ironically, the same thing that we've been saying at voter GA for, for, uh, 17 years, um, that the system is subject, uh, to hacking. And, um, there's quite a few findings in there. He went way deeper than even we had thought of going. But in addition to showing, explaining how the QR codes could be used to alter the votes, and he, you know, and he explained, for example, how the QR code, you could change the votes in the QR code, but not change the text, or you could change the text to defeat an audit. So there was multiple things that you can do there. He also forged the voter cards and the technician cards, and the, um, the poll worker cards so that he could do all sorts of things. Um, and the, the technician card, um, you know, is used throughout the county and really throughout the state.

(00:19:38):

So one forged technician card can be used anywhere. And he believes even it can be used in other states, he thinks so. Wow. So, uh, so that's, that's a really, that's one of the, just a couple of the significant findings. Um, the thing that we have been most concerned about that he confirmed was that the election definition files can be, uh, modified and, and if those are modified, they can be distributed to the counties undetectable, undetected, and then the counties can then distribute that to the, to the voting, uh, both the scanners and the ballot marking devices. So malware can be delivered into the system and spread everywhere. And this became a great concern of ours in 2017 when we found that, that here at the, uh, center for Election Systems at Kennesaw State, that system was wide open, uh, and exposed to the internet.

(00:20:35):

And that was the Secretary of State's main, uh, system, the, for election, uh, creation, that, and anyone in the entire world could have placed a malware on that system undetectable, uh, and had it distributed down to the counties for any election, and then further distributed to the, to the voting machine. So that's been our concern for quite a bit of while. Uh, but, um, uh, he actually corroborated that, uh, and decided exact, uh, same thing that we've said, uh, almost word for word. Uh, he also mentioned another thing that we've been saying for years, word for word, is that the system can be programmed to count differently for different days. Uh, and it can be, uh, programmed to count differently after a certain number of ballots that had been, uh, uh, put through the system. And one of the examples he used was the, the, um, uh, logic and actually testing that logic and actually testing, you only put one ballot through.

(00:21:35):

So the, the system can be programmed. You're, you're a programmer, you're already, I can tell, you know exactly where I'm going with this, and, but the system can be programmed to count the first ballot correctly, and then everything after that can be wrong. So, uh, so, uh, those are just a few of, of the, of the highlights, uh, in the report. Um, but I think one of the more important things is the bottom line that he got to, he, he said, again, another thing that we've been saying for years is that the system was not designed with the appropriate security for, um, for testing for, or engineered or, uh, any, any part of it design. It never was intended to have the appropriate level of security, and therefore it can't be retrofitted, uh, to fix. So what we have to do, um, and we can talk about this later, but we have to unplug Georgia from these, these machines. Uh, so those were kind of, that's a, a very high level of the, what I would think would be the most critical, uh, findings. And of course, we have all this up on voter ga.org studies tab, if anybody would like to see

Jenny Beth Martin (00:22:44):

It. And that's 95 pages. His report is 95 pages. Yes. Right? Yes. 96 pages. That's right. 96 pages. That's, that's right. So we'll make sure that in the links for this podcast that mm-hmm. that we, well, we'll have your website for sure. Voter ga.org. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And then we'll do our best to include those links in the description. Yeah.

Garland Favorito (00:23:05):

Yeah. And they're right on the studies tab that everything, everything we're talking about today is in, this is gonna be on that studies tab.

Jenny Beth Martin (00:23:13):

Now, the Secretary of State would not sit by idly and let, um, the, uh, the, that kind of a report stand. He, he did his own research, right?

Garland Favorito (00:23:26):

That's right. So the, at the same time, and actually it wasn't him, it was dominion. But at the same time, uh, the judge unsealed the, um, Halderman report, she unsealed the corresponding Mitre report, uh, uh, that was produced by the defense. Uh, so that report is interesting. It's a little bit different because first of all, the report is unsigned. No one would, is willing to put their name on that report. No one at Mitre was willing to put their name on that report. Uh, the second thing is, it was funded by Dominion, dominion Voting Systems. Uh, and the, uh, third thing is it was created without any access to the system. It was, it was all speculation. It wasn't a legitimate security analysis. And fourth, it assumed that all of the process controls were in place, the physical controls, and they all worked perfectly, which has already been proven to be false. Uh, that was the assumption of the report. So as a result of those four things, uh, a, a group of security experts 29 from around the country wrote to the president of Mitre and requested that that report be retracted because they considered it quote ridiculous unquote.

Jenny Beth Martin (00:24:53):

So there is a letter of 29 computer cybersecurity experts. Are they cybersecurity experts

Garland Favorito (00:25:02):

And, and computer science, academic, uh, professors and that,

Jenny Beth Martin (00:25:06):

Yeah. So they're not, they're not necessarily political hacks or people who do this professionally?

Garland Favorito (00:25:12):

That's right. I would have to say, I don't believe there was one political hack in that list of 29.

Jenny Beth Martin (00:25:18):

And they think that the report from Mitre is ridiculous.

Garland Favorito (00:25:21):

That was their exact quote.

Jenny Beth Martin (00:25:25):

So ridiculous.

Garland Favorito (00:25:27):

Yeah. Yeah. They, they called the assumption, uh, I think the term they used was absurd, the assumption that all of the, uh, physical security controls are in place. Uh, they consider that to be the, an absurd assumption for security analysis because of security analysis. It's supposed to assume that your physical controls were compromised and then, or

Jenny Beth Martin (00:25:49):

That they could be compromised. Could, so how do you, that's, how do you defend against possible compromise and Exactly. Some of the security controls in this instance, what kind of security controls do they think would, would be in place?

Garland Favorito (00:26:04):

Well, the, the, the primary thing is they challenge that, um, uh, Dr. Hobman wouldn't be able to have gotten access to a, an, uh, a voting system, uh, to have done that. Uh, but in, in part of his, um, his, uh, analysis, he explains very clearly how it could be, um, uh, you could gain access in the poll, uh, without a poll worker even knowing about it. So, but that's just one example.

Jenny Beth Martin (00:26:33):

You just, that card that looks like a credit card, they hand it to you. I'm just picturing this in my mind as we're talking. Um, they hand it to me when I check in to vote and I use a card that looks very much like it and pop it in place, and then can I get control of the machine at that point? Like, could I potentially, if I had,

Garland Favorito (00:26:57):

Yes, you could forge, uh, and, and he goes on to say that you would need very little time, uh, and you wouldn't, you could even be a non-technical voter. He, he mentioned a couple different scenarios where, uh, a non-technical voter could do it, or, and, and you would have very limited, uh, time needed to, to install, um, uh, a malware .

Jenny Beth Martin (00:27:21):

Now, if somebody is doing that, I wanna be very clear, and you're being very clear, and even in defense of the computer systems themselves in Defense of Dominion, they have to make some assumptions that, that the pe that people are not gonna come in and deliberately break the law and try to screw up the voting system. I mean, and that's a fair thing to mm-hmm. create a computer system around assuming that people are going to follow the law. And then you also need to have safeguards when it's something so important that in case somebody is trying to do something nefarious, you've got a way to push back. Exactly. So that must be part of where, where the breakdown is the pushback to prevent that kind of nefarious activity.

Garland Favorito (00:28:02):

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And then our, our concern has been not so much with an individual voter coming and doing something, the way our concern has been is that the, the, the system malware can come down from the Secretary of State's office. There's only a single point of attack there. And if you compromise that Secretary of State's office, as we saw happen in 2017, uh, then the malware can be distributed down to the counties. And the counties have no means to detect, uh, that, that, that they have gotten the malware, there's no security provision at their level. They accept, uh, um, and take for granted whatever they got from Secretary of State's office is correct. And that, that to me, is, is even a much bigger flaw than the issue of one person being able to compromise one ballot marking device in one, in one precinct or, or early voting location.

Jenny Beth Martin (00:28:55):

Um, and, and that is a, a huge issue, uh, that something could come down from the Secretary of State's office and affect mm-hmm. affect everything. And we've got 159 counties in Georgia. Right. Um, and some of these counties have 10,000 people. They're not very big. So they're not going to have a, a world class cybersecurity expert working full-time in a county election office Yeah. Of a county that has 10,000 people.

Garland Favorito (00:29:24):

In fact, none of them do all 159. No, not one of 'em has a, that kind of an individual on staff.

Jenny Beth Martin (00:29:29):

Uh, do we, at the state level?

Garland Favorito (00:29:33):

Uh, that's a really good question. I'm not aware of anyone I would call a cybersecurity expert who is actually employed by the Secretary of State's office. Um, they tend to look for that type of individual from the outside and use 'em for contract

Jenny Beth Martin (00:29:49):

Purposes. And that makes sense, because if you're an expert on that, you're gonna be mm-hmm. working for multiple Yes. Have multiple clients. Yes. So that, that part does make sense. Okay. So Halderman had the machines, the whole system for 12 weeks before he wrote his report, and he analyzed it and looked at it every which way, it sounds like.

Garland Favorito (00:30:12):

Yes. Well, well, well, let, let me clarify one thing. He only looked at the ballot marking devices. This is what's interesting about the port, and I forgot to mention this earlier. He never looked at the, well, he did look at the scanners, but he only mentioned, uh, one aspect of the scanners. And that is that they can accept, uh, they will accept ballots, uh, that are not on any type of security paper. And they, and they will accept duplicate ballots that are photocopied. And he mentioned that as a, as a major flaw in the scanners. But had he done his report, another report on the scanners, like he did on the ballot marketing devices, I'm convinced that he would've found a variety of flaws, just like he found about marketing devices also on the scanners. So, but that was out of scope for, for the most part, for, for his report.

Jenny Beth Martin (00:31:06):

That's fair to note. And probably if we had some sort of, um, analysis of the, the scanners in, in Arizona's case of printers, we'd have an even better understanding of mm-hmm. of what is going on with these machines and the flaws and the vulnerabilities. So Mitre had the machines for, how long did you say?

Garland Favorito (00:31:29):

Well, my zero .

Jenny Beth Martin (00:31:32):

So 12 weeks versus zero,

Garland Favorito (00:31:34):

That was a trick question, wasn't it? Yes. You almost got me. Yeah, I had to think about it. Yeah, it was zero. It was actually zero. They never touched the machines,

Jenny Beth Martin (00:31:42):

And yet they, they pro produced a report assuming that everyone is good, clean actor and not nefarious. And, um, and what did they decide about the machines?

Garland Favorito (00:31:54):

Well, they, they, they explained, they claimed that the halderman, uh, they were not operationally feasible, is, I think it was the term that they used. Um, and, uh, they said that because, uh, they, the, the secretary has physical access controls in place to prevent access. But in reality, uh, you know, the, the, they have, I, I actually been compromised several times. So, um, that assumption doesn't hold up. Not only it's a false assumption for security analysis, but it doesn't really hold up in, in real life here in Georgia as well.

Jenny Beth Martin (00:32:33):

Why do you say it doesn't hold up in real life? Well, well,

Garland Favorito (00:32:35):

There's been, you know, different cases where, uh, people have, uh, gotten access, uh, to the case. One, the, one of the, the coalition, uh, uh, plaintiffs mentioned, uh, you know, coffee County situation where they were incredibly concerned about their system because it failed to count correctly on in 2020. Yeah,

Jenny Beth Martin (00:32:55):

I saw those videos. Yeah.

Garland Favorito (00:32:56):

It was both, both the, the recount failed, uh, multiple ways. It, they put, they had 39 votes were not counted. Then they found 185 that needed to go in. The system didn't recognize them, and they finally had to certify the hand count audit. So they wanted to get their system checked out because the Secretary of State wouldn't do anything about it. So, so the coalition cites that as an example of, um, the, or the petitioners cite that as an example of where, you know, security, the assumptions of that mire report are false. Uh, so it's not only that they are invalid for security analysis, but they're also false for the state of Georgia. So it's just so wrong. It's un it's, it's unreal.

Jenny Beth Martin (00:33:40):

Uh, and so there are a lot of problems here. Um, what is the solution? What is the, the Secretary State seeing as the solution? What are you saying is the solution? How do we solve this problem? 'cause we've got an election coming up in about 18 months. Well, probably more like 15 months.

Garland Favorito (00:34:02):

Well, right. So the solution keeps saying that it's secure. Um, but Secretary of State said that, but it's not. So, so there's, there's different, uh, alternatives out there. I'm glad you asked this question because, um, you know, the people are, some people are saying, well, we need to pass the system, but that doesn't prove that the system's gonna work correctly. Um, and uh, really what it boils down to is that the real solution, the real long, long-term solution is to unplug Georgia from voting system altogether. And, uh, we believe that we should, uh, hand mark paper ballots on security grade paper, hand count 'em at the precinct. Uh, still cast votes in secrecy, but that's the ultimate solution, we think. But in the short term, to your point, 'cause we have a, a presidential primary coming up in March. Right? So the immediate fix for this is simply to unseal the ballot so that we can use them to detect counterfeits and to verify the election results of, of, uh, an unverifiable voting system.

(00:35:11):

So what we are gonna suggest as voter ga is to, to have the Secretary of state, uh, seek a court order to unsee all ballots from the 20 20, 20 22 and 2024 elections. And that way we will know who won. There won't be any, uh, any dispute about it. There won't be any of the, uh, divisiveness that exists, the farm between Democrats and Republicans, both thinking that they have been cheated and mean. They may well be right. So, um, that would go a long way, I think, to solve the problem. And it doesn't matter what version of the software you're running, you, you've got those tests in place to aim, you know, public balance to ensure that, uh, whatever the system is doing, that it might be wrong. You'll catch it in the, in the, uh, uh, the stage where you're actually can, can see the ballots.

Jenny Beth Martin (00:36:03):

And when you say unseal the ballots, do you mean the paper ballots or the scanned images? And what would happen to them once they're unsealed? Where how could the public see them?

Garland Favorito (00:36:13):

Uh, absolutely. That's the whole, uh, that's the whole idea, is to unseal the ballot so the public can see in Georgia, ballots are sealed upon certification of election, and nobody's been able to get them to be, get unsealed again. We have spent two or three years, despite overwhelming evidence of counterfeit ballots, uh, of trying to get the ballots unsealed so we can see how many counterfeits there are. So if there was, um, either a law or which we've tried to advocate for and come close to passing, or the Secretary of State could just take it upon himself to, as some of the county elections directors have already done, and request the court order to unsealed, the judge is gonna, uh, do what he asks. And then that way that takes all the, the, the question out of the election. And there's no more divisive fighting amongst, uh, different, you know, uh, factions in America who think that they had been cheated. You know, we, we can all look at the ballots. We can all see who actually won.

Jenny Beth Martin (00:37:11):

And again, I'm gonna ask it one this part one more time. So when the he unseals the way that you're looking for, would it be the scanned images or the physical ballots? I'm sorry. Yes. No, it's okay because you, I asked three questions, I think. Yes,

Garland Favorito (00:37:24):

No, that, that's a really good point. That's very important. Glad you asked me again. So the, uh, we were talking about the physical ballots now in, uh, 2021, Senate Bill 2 0 2 did make ballot images public record. We were very excited about that, and it thought it was a great thing, and it is a great thing. We went out of voter ga, went out and did a statewide survey of all the ballot images in the state of Georgia for the 2020 election. The original ballot images. We found, uh, two things. The first thing we found was that over 1.7 million of the original ballot images were destroyed in violation of federal and state retention law. That both the, the, um, ballot images are election records and under, uh, state law and federal law, they should have been retained 22 months federally and, uh, 24 months, uh, at the state level.

(00:38:20):

So the counties, and there was about 70 different counties, uh, I think, well at least it was over 50, and then another 16 or so that didn't comply with the O R R. Uh, but the, those had destroyed the images. So we were to check the original ballot images. Uh, but in the counties that did, um, uh, retain them, uh, we have one example where we found that the ballot image, uh, which by the way is first of all is used to, is to produce the election results. You, the image is scanned to create a cast vote record, and the cast vote record is then, uh, actually tabulated to produce the results. So the ballot image is the key record, but what we found is that at least in one case, that the ballot images were electronically altered before the results were certified in one county. So, uh, we have that evidence. We've, we've done a, um, a, a press comments on that, I guess it was about a year ago. So, um, so that's why the images alone are not, uh, good enough. We have to have the physical ballots to ensure that the, uh, results are correct.

Jenny Beth Martin (00:39:30):

The original ballot scanned images, the original scanned image of the ballot, where would that be on, how, how would they get rid of that? How would they delete it or write over it,

Garland Favorito (00:39:43):

Or, well, yes. Yeah, what, what happened in that case is they overwrote the memory cards that contained the images. So, well, this is ironic because if you spend $150 million for a voting system, you would think that they could afford $10 for some per card, for some extra memory cards. Right? Uh, so, but they overwrote the cards, uh, that contained the images and used them for the next election. And when we asked some of the counties, uh, about that, a couple of them produced emails from the, uh, state election directors saying that they could do this, even though it's in violation of law.

Jenny Beth Martin (00:40:21):

And it, it, it's not that they didn't see the images, so they saved the images, so they scanned it and they have the image and they uploaded it somewhere. So it's on a server on another computer. So you can get that image. But what you don't know is, is that file that you're getting the actual original file or not, right?

Garland Favorito (00:40:40):

Well, we could not even get the original, uh, uh, copy. Wow. Yeah, we, we could not get the copy. That's what they should have done. But they were, uh, they said they did not have the original images. These are counties that not, not only did they overwrite the memory cards, but they claim they didn't have 'em uploaded to the server as well. So, uh, we had literally had no, it wasn't that we just had a copy of, uh, you know, of the image. We didn't have the, the image, uh, whatsoever.

Jenny Beth Martin (00:41:10):

That's insane.

Garland Favorito (00:41:13):

. Thank you. Thank you.

Jenny Beth Martin (00:41:14):

It's just crazy. I don't understand, I mean, that it is clearly in violation of the law. The, it's a federal law, right, that says stead federal and state law, that you have to have the, the election records for two years.

Garland Favorito (00:41:29):

Right. And, and what, what more, what election record could be more than the ballot image, because that's one of the only, only the ballots and the ballot images can actually reproduce the election results. No other record can do that. So it's certainly one of the most important records. And then for it to turn out missing, uh, was just, uh, absolutely. We were astounded by that.

Jenny Beth Martin (00:41:51):

Now, in their defense, one thing I could say is that it, the election in 2020 was the first time we had a statewide election in the general election that was using these new machines. Right. So it, it is possible that they just didn't understand, because with the old machines, there weren't even ballot images.

Garland Favorito (00:42:13):

Well, right. But there were memory cards. There were

Jenny Beth Martin (00:42:15):

Memory

Garland Favorito (00:42:16):

Cards. So, so that's true. But the memory cards work the same way. So they, they, they're used to using memory cards. They know that there's critical data on them. I've seen no reason why they would've destroyed them. But then, and on top of that, some of them references said, well, wait a minute. We have a state election board rule that allows us to, uh, to, uh, just, you know, overwrite those cards as well after, uh, for the next election. And we have gone to the state election board and said, your rule is in violation of, of, uh, federal and state law. And, and, and they have not changed that rule. And we've notified them for almost a year ago.

Jenny Beth Martin (00:42:55):

And that is the state election board who has this rule?

Garland Favorito (00:42:58):

That's right. The state election board.

Jenny Beth Martin (00:43:02):

I think 90% of the problems that we are facing with the computer systems, it is my opinion, after having worked on this for three years, not nearly as long as you have that the people who we're trying to talk to, to get to do what they need to do, whether it's a legislator or the state election board or a judge, um, they don't have a computer background, and they do not at all understand what they're doing. A lot of them have a law background, but they don't understand how to program computers. And if they did, they would see like logic and accuracy testing. We laughed a minute ago when I shook my head because they test one ballot. Well, you should be testing a ballot for every single possible combination for the way that a voter might vote. Exactly. So one ballot might produce a hundred different PO in a precinct, one ballot might produce a hundred or a thousand different possible versions of the ballot for how voters vote. That's right. They should be testing every single one of those to make sure that somehow, somewhere along the way, if you voted for county Commissioner A in this race and school board candidate b in this race, that that combination doesn't mess up something further down the way. They don't even understand that. That's how you test a computer system. You test every possible scenario.

Garland Favorito (00:44:24):

Exactly. And, and, uh, you know, and same with the scanners and the ballot marking devices. And, and the problem that you hit on, uh, Jenny, is that, uh, there, I would say, I would think I could say that there isn't a single elections director in the state of Georgia who is computer literate to the, to the extent of understanding, uh, how a computer is programmed. Um, and when we keep going to them and explaining these things, they, they'll say, well, the logic in actually testing proves that is right. So, you know, what do you mean? Uh, and you know, they, and they don't understand the fallacy of what they're saying because they're not technically literate enough.

Jenny Beth Martin (00:45:03):

Yeah. And it's, um, it, it, it just, it, it's very, very frustrating. So I How does it make you feel? I just sort you, how it makes me feel. How does that make you feel?

Garland Favorito (00:45:16):

Frustrated? Uh, it's very frustrated. And I'm glad that I, I , I'm glad that you, I have some company now, uh, in my, in the frustration. Um, but I, the only thing we know to do is just to keep persevering, uh, until we get a resolution, uh, to the issue. Uh, more and more the elections officials, uh, have lost their trust in the Secretary of State's office because of these types of things. So, uh, that's good for us. But we still, um, haven't gotten a solution yet from either the County Elections offices or the Secretary of State

Jenny Beth Martin (00:45:54):

And the County Elections offices. I think that they feel like their hands are tied. I mean, if you're a county with 10,000 people, like the example I used, 'cause we so many counties, we really have some very small ones or a hundred thousand people, you don't have a lot of spare tax dollars sitting around, hopefully to be able to defend yourself in a bunch of lawsuits or in litigation against the state of Georgia. So I, I do understand they have to, to look at the cost benefit analysis of what they're doing. But the Secretary of State should I, I, I wish that the office and the people in it would understand. I, I don't think that they're evil. I don't know that you think that they're evil. I, I think that they're missing Yeah. Important, yeah. Components and and they just don't see them. Yeah.

Garland Favorito (00:46:47):

They're, they're misguided by the Secretary of State's office in most cases. Uh, we see this over and over again where they've gotten what we consider to be patently false information from that office. And they, you know, they don't understand that they're being misled. Now, more of 'em are waking up. But I think that's one of the key problems.

Jenny Beth Martin (00:47:08):

Okay. So you said that you think that one of the things that needs to be done, the most important thing, well, the most important thing is not using the machines not going to happen before November, 2024. I wish it would. You wish it would, but we also know the reality of, of what we're looking at with that. So then make the ballot ballots available for public record. So how would you envision that that works? Like in a county like DeKalb or Fulton or Cobb? These are massive counties, Gwinnett, how would the, the ballots, if they're available for public record, what would happen then? Well,

Garland Favorito (00:47:44):

It's very simple, uh, because, uh, once this legal seal is removed and it's not a physical seal, it's a legal seal, um, then they're just subject to open records request law. Uh, they already are subject to open records request law, but they have been physically sealed to prevent them from, from being subject to open records request law. So once you take that off, then basically, uh, you as an, if you wanted to request a copy of the ballots or an inspection of the ballots, then you should be able to do that. If you requested a copy of the ballots, what, what, what we want them to do is to be able to make, um, independent copy of the ballots a copy that's independent of the voting system on a separate scanner, just scan the ballots in. Uh, and we would expect a 600 D p I image that's a little bit higher resolution, still not extremely high, but it's high enough to detect counterfeits. And it's certainly way more than enough to verify the results. So that copy could be paid for by the requester. And so there's no taxpayer expense there. And if that inspection, uh, is, uh, needed, then that inspection is done under the custody of the elections officials. They will handle the ballots, uh, and the, um, requesters get to look at 'em. So, uh, that takes away all the arguments. You know, there's no, no tampering with the ballots as possible. Uh, there's no cost to the taxpayer, and there's no reason not to make them public.

Jenny Beth Martin (00:49:15):

I think the only thing that would happen is they'd say, well, it cost money to make the copies or whatever. But they could make that like, open records request. If I request 10,000 sheets of paper, I'm gonna be paying for 10,000 sheets of paper.

Garland Favorito (00:49:29):

Exactly. So there is no, there's no cost to, um, to the county.

Jenny Beth Martin (00:49:35):

Seems pretty simple to do. Okay. That, that's one, one solution. Now, you mentioned something about patches. Why are people talking about patches to, to a computer system?

Garland Favorito (00:49:48):

Well, there was a suggestion to upgrade, um, the pa the patch, the system to a different version. Um, I think it's 5.5 to 5.17. Don't ask me why it's going backwards, but, uh, anyway, uh,

Jenny Beth Martin (00:50:02):

, yeah. I just stop right there and Right, go ahead. We can't control their numbers.

Garland Favorito (00:50:08):

Uh, yeah, exactly. Um, but, um, that really, uh, would not, uh, solve, uh, any, any problem. 'cause we still would not know that the patch, uh, is any more secure than the previous version. And it, it, uh, was not designed to address the, um, haldeman's, uh, issues anyway. So we still wouldn't be able to verify it even if it was installed. So,

Jenny Beth Martin (00:50:34):

So if they did the patch, then Halderman would need to do another 12 weeks of analysis, or we'd need another analysis, very much like what he did in the first place anyway.

Garland Favorito (00:50:43):

But even, yes, but even that would not solve the problem because we don't know if the system would still count correctly on election day and, and in and early voting. And for an election, um, even if it passed his analysis, that wouldn't prove, uh, election day. Um, and of course it would take so much more time. So the simple thing to do is just, uh, if once the ballots are public record, then it doesn't matter what version of the software you're running, you can verify the results and then you don't care anymore. If they choose not to make the patch, then that's so be it. As long as we can verify the results. Uh, that's all that's

Jenny Beth Martin (00:51:19):

Important. Now, after the election with Bush and Gore in the year 2000, didn't the media go back in and do just this? In, in, in the state of Florida, they went into every single county and recounted all of the ballots to, to come up with what they felt like was the total, which wound up being an independent analysis and count of the ballots after, after Bush was already president.

Garland Favorito (00:51:47):

Right. And that's the only way you can do it. It's a true hand count of the actual physical ballots. And that will tell you what the real results are, and it'll ensure that your, your, uh, voting system is counting correctly. It's, it's just common sense. We, you know, we do this in, in the corporate world, all, all along, you, you have to have an independent audit trail to verify the electronic results.

Jenny Beth Martin (00:52:09):

Now, if I were the Secretary of State, I would, or someone who had spoken to him, I would say something like this. Well, we did a full statewide hand recount in in 2020. Yes. And we know everything worked just fine from that. Which, how would you respond to that? Well,

Garland Favorito (00:52:28):

The first part is true, but the second is not . So he did do a full hand count audit of the, of the presidential race. Only the presidential race didn't do anything for the Senate race or, um, and that was the right thing to do. So that was, uh, that was good. But what we found out, you know, after he said that that would, was proved that the system counted correctly, what we actually found out is we looked at one of the counties and we found that they had a 60% batch error rate for the first, that was the first problem. So by batch, I mean that when you're doing your audit, the, uh, you write down the number of votes for let's say Donald Trump and Joe Biden and Joe Jorgenson, the libertarian candidate. And then when we got the ballot images, we looked at the tally sheets for each batch, which is about a hundred ballot. And we found out that 60% of the time, the tally sheet did not reflect correct number of images in, in the, um, in, in the, um, files that we had. So that's really a bit crazy. That's like, that's 60%, not 6% or six tenths of a percent, but it's six

Jenny Beth Martin (00:53:40):

Six out of every

Garland Favorito (00:53:41):

10, 6 0. That's exactly right. Six 0% had incorrect results. Then we found that there were seven falsified tally sheets with, um, uh, 850 to nothing, uh, total Biden votes over Trump and Jorgensen. Uh, those, uh, were clearly wrong. We look at the ballot images, just to give you one example. We'll look at the ballot images for one batch. It'll show 60, uh, votes for Joe Biden and 40 for Donald Trump. But yet when we look at the tally sheet, it'll show 100 to nothing. So the tally sheet, uh, had to been, had to have been falsified, yet that doesn't look like a mastectomy. Then we found, um, duplicate scanned ballots. Uh, uh, several hundred of those. I think 3 75 was the number we ended up with. And then we found, uh, four to 6,000, uh, duplicate reported ballots in the audit. So these are ballots that were, uh, actually reported twice within the audit, uh, and not once as they were supposed to be. So the bottom line of all that is how did that audit confirm the original results? If it had a 60% error rate falsified tally sheets and thousands of duplicate reported ballots? It really didn't,

Jenny Beth Martin (00:55:01):

And the numbers didn't match right from the certification to the hand count, the numbers did not match. Right. And when they did not match, as they were counting these, I made phone calls to, to election boards around the state and said, what happens if it doesn't match? And the answer, I'm, I'm not giving a direct quote, so it's coming from memory, but the answer was something along the lines of, well, we just send the, the results to the Secretary of State and the Secretary of State's office decides which ones to use.

Garland Favorito (00:55:31):

Yeah, yeah. Um, it's really crazy, you know, is that the way we actually run elections? And, and by the way, uh, just so everybody knows that we're not making this up, governor Kemp actually created his own 36 point study based on our information that, uh, that I'm just telling you. We released air information in, um, I guess it was, I'm trying to remember. I think it was July. And he came out with a report in November, I guess last year, uh, to confirm, uh, what we had done. And he asked instead, election board to do something about it, what, you know, to look into it. And of course, that was the last week. We've heard of that.

Jenny Beth Martin (00:56:13):

And we don't know the status of what the state election board is doing on that. We don't, we also know. And the scanned images that you were just talking about of that, is that on your website? The, in the, you said 4,000 and we,

Garland Favorito (00:56:28):

We had a, uh, yes, we have a press release on that. Um, and that is dated, I believe in no, July of thir July 13th, is it, of last year? So

Jenny Beth Martin (00:56:41):

Of 2022.

Garland Favorito (00:56:42):

Uh, it was at 2021. I'm not, the years were starting to get away from me.

Jenny Beth Martin (00:56:46):

Um, and, and was this the, the work that, um, David Cross was involved

Garland Favorito (00:56:51):

In? Yes, yes. Mm-hmm. and in fact, um, uh, David's, um, you know, we did a press conference and that was picked up by Tucker Carlson, uh, and carried, uh, lot that created a lot of pressure, uh, down on the Georgia legislature.

Jenny Beth Martin (00:57:04):

And then we also know that Cherokee County and the primary, in 2022, the primary and the runoff in 2022, did a risk limiting audit. So they didn't do counts countywide, um, of all of the, the ballots, um, right. The whole entire county. But they did of some, yes. A handful of precincts. Yes. And they, the cover letter for that report says something along the lines of, it's well below the, it's acceptable, 10% deviation, and it was below the 5% that the Secretary of State's office said was acceptable in 2020. And in 2020s, r l a, that wa was the presidential race. There was an 11,779 vote difference. So if they allowed a 5% deviation, that could have given Biden a whole lot more votes, or it could have given, I mean, a 5% deviation would change the,

Garland Favorito (00:58:05):

It would've changed the outcome by 10 times or 20 times over.

Jenny Beth Martin (00:58:10):

Okay. Um, so let me ask you, we've been going nearly an hour. Um, you, you talked about the solutions and we've on only covered Halderman. Can we quickly go through the, you, you are involved or voter ga or at least Ricardo, who is very active in voter GA is involved in the coalition, um, with the curling v Raff Asperger case. Do you have any other lawsuits going on? Can we just let people know what else you, you do?

Garland Favorito (00:58:43):

Sure, sure. We actually, most people don't realize we have five or six active lawsuits right now in the State of Georgia. One is to try to see the ballots on the 2020 election. Um, that is, uh, the, what we call the Fulton County counterfeit ballot case. It's pretty famous around the country. Most people probably know what that case is. We won an order in the Georgia Supreme Court that confirmed that we have always had standing to sue government agencies and officials when they violate the law. Uh, so we lost two and a half years with a bogus lower court ruling on that. Uh, that case has gone, uh, to the Superior Court. And that judge has then now tried to route this to another judge, judge McBurney, who's over a top of the finally Willis, uh, investigation of the Trump Ravensburger phone call. Uh, he's incredibly biased and, uh, we've documented why and how and we are filed a motion to recuse him from the case.

(00:59:43):

That's where that one stands. We have another case, uh, that we have filed to ban this Dominion Bureau Code of voting System from the state of Georgia. That one, we just determined, uh, this past week that we're gonna, uh, file a writ of CERT to the Georgia Supreme Court on that one as well. Uh, the judge was supposed to simply rule on the sufficiency of our complaint, and she tried to rule on evidence without ever allowing any evidence to be introduced. Uh, just absolutely absurd, uh, procedural violations, uh, court. Um, a third case, which, uh, has created a lot of interest is the case where we've sued to ban the outsourcing of voter data to the cloud. We originally sued because of the Salesforce M T X contract, uh, that was going to be used to create a system that Secretary of State causes. Jarvis, that is Jarvis system has been a disaster.

(01:00:37):

The data in it is not correct. The county elections officials are up in arms about it. There's, uh, 3,500 open support tickets on the system. Uh, it's just been, uh, crazy. They, it actually told us, uh, they told one of the folks who made an open records request that it would take months just to give them a list of the open of the support tickets that are on that system. So, but the point is that it violates the law because it outsources private. Some of the election data is private voter data and it outsources that to the cloud. That's a election privacy law violation. It also outsources, uh, data, which is a, um, uh, the General Assembly's never given Secretary of State, uh, power or authority to outsource any voter data of any kind, private or not. And then finally, uh, secretary did this with a blanket purchase order, uh, that, uh, violates the no bid, uh, the bid contract rules in Georgia.

(01:01:39):

He did, he had a three and a half million no bid contract. He was supposed to get a bid over a hundred thousand. So we sued for that. That case has not had a hearing yet, but in January, we, we modified that to also include Eric, because that's the same type of system. It's a third party, uh, voter system, and it should not have outsourced data there. A lot of the ca states are already getting off of Eric. And then at the same time, we subpoenaed the Conex servers in Los Angeles because we know that they are holding, uh, Georgia resident data. Uh, and that's, uh, was, um, apparently fell into the hands of the, uh, communist Chinese government. Uh, so, um, that's another, uh, path that we're going down.

Jenny Beth Martin (01:02:26):

Now, we've talked a lot about problems. Sometimes you encounter and, well, were you about to say something

Garland Favorito (01:02:33):

Else? Actually, I did, I forgot one more important suit. Uh, there's probably one or two more, but the other one that I've, we haven't had a hearing on is we challenged the Brad Raff Asperger's, uh, primary, uh, in 2022. Uh, no, no race was audited. Uh, that found, was found to be correct in that primary, the only race that was audited was a DeKalb district two commission rates that was found where the, the voting system actually declared the wrong winner, uh, or winners plural. Uh, but we, uh, sued for that because we, again, we want to see the ballots because the Secretary of State is, uh, basically conducting his own election on unverifiable voting equipment. We would like to see to prove, uh, for him to prove that he actually won that, that one was an election challenge. We have not had a hearing on that one yet. So, uh, that was, uh, one that I forgot. And then we also have one more, uh, against the several counties for destroying those ballot images we talked about earlier. So that's probably enough to, uh, enough of a background on, on some of the things that we're doing on behalf of the voters in Georgia.

Jenny Beth Martin (01:03:39):

And, and a lot of the information that you get, it benefits Georgia and it also benefits the country because we wind up seeing how I, I, when I go around the country, I reference, I reference the information that ha mo the most that has come out either in, in state legislative hearings, in congressional hearings, in lawsuits and court cases. Mm-hmm. Because they all have standards of evidence. And I feel pretty confident that I can say, well, this is the evidence that was presented. You can, you can draw your own conclusions about it, but we know these things to be factual, and they, they withstood the, the rules of evidence and, and it gives us insight into how the machines are working, how the machines are accounting information, what, whether, what, what, what kind of things are going on that, that we can speculate about, but we don't have the evidence to prove it one way or the other. So you help find that evidence, get the evidence admitted somewhere and the rest of the world can look at it.

Garland Favorito (01:04:44):

Thank you. Yeah, we're trying, uh, and sometimes the judge make judges make that difficult to, for it to happen, but that's what we're trying to do.

Jenny Beth Martin (01:04:51):

It, they, they really and truly make it very, very, very difficult. And it, a lot of it has become such a political partisan, it's become partisan and it shouldn't be,

Garland Favorito (01:05:07):

Right. Because it's about the, uh, the elections. It's a political hot potato. And I think that really the, the judges are afraid to touch it. They just, uh, are afraid to expose the evidence that would show that American election systems are just a facade. We're, we're not conducting legitimate elections. Uh, and uh, that's one of the reasons why we need so much transparency and uh, that's what we're up against. 'cause as you said this, it's a nonpartisan issue. It's not really about any, uh, presidential candidates. So say, you know, Donald Trump or Joe Biden or whatever, it's really about how we conduct elections in the future that is secure and honest and transparent for the voters. That's what the voters want. But they're being pre prevented from that by elections officials, um, throughout the country, not just in Georgia.

Jenny Beth Martin (01:06:01):

Right. Secure, honest, transparent, and verifiable. That's so that after the fact we can trust the security and, and the transparency. Exactly. Well, now we've given a bleak picture of, of some of what's going on in Georgia. There have been changes since, since 2020. There've been some positive changes like the ballot, IM images mm-hmm. , the scanned images or public records. Right.

Garland Favorito (01:06:29):

They've, they, they have, um, banned outdoor drop boxes. That was a good thing. There's probably a couple more things I could, you know, think of. Uh, but yeah, it's, we've made some good changes. We just need to make some more changes.

Jenny Beth Martin (01:06:41):

And if somebody comes up to you when you're speaking around the country, this happens to me often as well. And they just go, it's all just rigged. And it doesn't matter how we vote one way or the other. What, what do you tell, tell them

Garland Favorito (01:06:53):

That's exactly what the other side wants you to think. You know, they want you to give up your vote so that you can see all your power, never cede your power, uh, vote. And then it's up to organizations like us, like voter ga, to try to protect your right, uh, to have your vote counted, uh, and that no other illegal votes are counted. We're, we're gonna do everything we can to, to try to keep that, uh, you know, from happening.

Jenny Beth Martin (01:07:19):

So always vote it when you're allowed to legally and don't get so frustrated with the system that you just decide don't vote.

Garland Favorito (01:07:29):

Absolutely.

Jenny Beth Martin (01:07:30):

Well, thank you so much Garland for being with us today. And perhaps, um, as we move closer to 2020, gosh, I started to say 2022, but as we move closer to 2024 or into 2024, maybe we can have you come back and give, and give an update. But I think the things we covered today, it helps kind of clear up some of what's going on. And we, I tried to go into it in enough detail that people who maybe have heard these phrases but don't know what they are, understand it more.

Garland Favorito (01:08:00):

Great. Yeah. I think anybody who watches this will find it really informative.

Jenny Beth Martin (01:08:04):

Well, thank you so much. And it's voter ga.org, right? That's

Garland Favorito (01:08:08):

Right.

Jenny Beth Martin (01:08:08):

Well, everyone go check out Garland's website and he takes donations and you can tell he is doing good work. So don't hesitate to click on donate

Garland Favorito (01:08:16):

And, and we are volunteers most importantly, so that money, it's a tax deductible will go to. Good, good cause.

Jenny Beth Martin (01:08:23):

Thank you very much.

Narrator (01:08:24):

The Jenny Beth Show is hosted by Jenny Beth Martin, produced by Kevin Mohan and directed by Luke Livingston. The Jenny Beth Show is a production of Tea Party Patriots action. For more information, visit tea party patriots.org.

Jenny Beth Martin (01:08:44):

If you like this episode, let me know by hitting the light button or leaving a comment or a five star review. And if you wanna be the first to know, every time we drop a new episode, be sure to subscribe and turn on notifications on whichever platform you're listening to. If you do these simple things, it will help the podcast grow, and I appreciate it very much.